The SEC’s proposed “Regulation Best Interest” is anything but, a plan for creating a veneer of investor protection that would fail to chase bad practices out of the industry that cost savers $40 billion per year. Many savers fall victim to brokers who steer them into investments that pay lucrative fees but don’t generate the best possible return for investors.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund sent a letter to the SEC regarding proposed amendments to the Commission’s Whistleblower Program rules. While we generally support a few of the proposed amendments, we are concerned that a number other proposed changes would initially undermine the Whistleblower
“’Quarterly disclosures are very important. A lot can happen in six months, and it’s just not appropriate to reduce disclosures,’ said Marcus Stanley, the policy director for Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of foundations, unions and public interest groups that pushes for stronger financial regulation. ‘It’s just going to advantage insiders further.’”
“The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs meets today to conduct hearings on a set of bills ostensibly designed to increase access to capital. Several of these bills are part of a dangerous agenda to rollback securities markets regulations. The deregulation of private capital markets contemplated in these bills would disproportionately affect small, retail investors vis-à-vis large investors and would undermine the effective regulations and investor protections that are fundamental principles of stable and enlarging U.S. public capital markets. “
Americans for Financial Reform sent a letter to members of the House Committee on Financial Services urging them to reject two bills in today’s markup.
“’The standard of conduct the agency has articulated appears ambiguous at best,’ Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform, said in a statement. ‘It doesn’t simply ban the sales quotas and other compensation practices that lead brokers to put their clients into high-fee, lower-yielding investments.’”
“The Omnibus budget package contains several policy riders designed to benefit Wall Street investment funds and big banks at the expense of the public. One provision in the omnibus allows Business Development Companies (BDCs), a type of private equity fund sold directly to retail customers, to double their permitted fund leverage from the current 1-1 level (one dollar of borrowed money for each dollar of investor equity) to 2-1. BDCs are already the beneficiary of regulatory exemptions since conventional closed-end mutual funds can only leverage 1-2, or borrow one dollar per two dollars of investor equity…”
AFR sent a letter urging House members to vote “No” on H.R. 3978 — a grab bag of bad legislative ideas that would weaken SEC oversight of Wall Street and undermine consumers, investors rights and protections.
AFR sent a letter to the House Financial Services Committee opposing a dozen bills that would deregulate banks and strip away consumer and investor protections.