This legislation would prevent the Department of Labor from addressing flaws in protections for retirement savings, protections that have not been updated for almost forty years. It would also delay efforts of the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise the standard of conduct that applies to brokers when they give advice to retail investors.
In the end, the Commission stood firm against industry resistance to a common-sense disclosure requirement. The SEC also correctly insisted that part-time and overseas workers be included in the calculation, consistent with the language and intent of the statute.
Under current practice, investors seeking brokerage and other financial advisory services must agree in advance to submit any complaints to arbitration by an industry-run regulatory body. The Investor Choice Act would restore the right of investors to take such disputes to a court of law, if they prefer.
“Without real built-in investor-protection standards, we are seriously concerned that this rule will open the door to mass marketing of hedge funds and other risky and often illiquid ‘private’ securities in a market where abuses are common and SEC oversight is very limited. Fraud and abuse are not good for investors; they’re not good for capital markets, either.”
“Think of the precedent… rushing forward with the aspects of the rule supported by industry while offering the faint possibility that the commission might one day get around to addressing the concerns raised by investors.”
View or download PDF. “Former employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) routinely help corporations try to influence SEC rulemaking, counter the agency’s investigations of suspected wrongdoing, soften the blow of SEC enforcement actions, block shareholder proposals, and win exemptions from federal law.”
Additional investor safeguards should be considered, say two of the five SEC commissioners.
“The Libor bid-rigging scandal is poised to more than double the losses suffered by U.S. states and localities that bought $500 billion in interest-rate swaps before the financial crisis,” according to Bloomberg News (Oct. 9). “Manipulation of the London interbank offered rate cost issuers in
In a telephone press conference co-hosted by Americans for Financial Reform, investor advocates and the president of a state securities regulators’ group sharply criticized the SEC’s proposed rule to permit the mass marketing of private stock offerings. The four speakers were united in asking the
In a press-teleconference this afternoon, Arkansas State Securities Commissioner Heath Abshure, who is also president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, joined three investor advocates in sharply criticizing the Securities and Exchange Commission’s first JOBS Act rulemaking – one that allows the mass marketing