The SEC has released new guidance on corporate disclosures in light of COVID, which includes a recommendation that companies disclose more information about health and safety policies. We see this as a positive first step toward requiring the disclosures requested in a letter sent to the SEC last week by Americans for Financial Reform and nearly 100 other organizations.
The problems the SEC identified include fund managers’ failure to make full and fair disclosure of conflicts of interest, charging improper fees, and failure to implement policies to prevent staff from trading on material non-public information. In other words, the SEC’s examinations have shown that private equity and hedge fund managers are consistently engaged in self-dealing and overcharging investors, like pension funds that provide for the retirement security of millions of Americans.
The Securities and Exchange Commission should create new disclosure requirements that would allow investors to analyze how companies are acting to protect workers, prevent the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, and responsibly use any federal aid they receive, according to a letter signed by more than 98 investors, state treasurers, public interest groups, labor unions, asset managers and securities law experts.
AFR Education Fund sent the letter below to the Securities and Exchange Commission opposing changes to rules governing how corporations can raise investment capital. These rules would make it easier for companies to raise capital without doing basic disclosures about their business or following other
Read or download the full PDF version of the letter. The AFR Education Fund sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission opposing proposed changes to rules concerning proxy voting advisors and resubmission thresholds for shareholder proposals. Taken together, the changes will dramatically reduce
The measure, which is scheduled for a vote at the company’s annual meeting next week, would block investors harmed by securities fraud or other corporate legal violations from bringing their claims as a class in a court of law, before a judge and jury. This would effectively end most shareholders’ ability to recover their losses in such cases, as they cannot affordably be brought individually in arbitration by any but the very largest institutional investors.
AFR held a day-long convening of experts to discuss emerging issues in the SEC regulation of registered investment companies (mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds that are registered under the 1940 Act).
View or download a PDF version of the letter. Consumer Federation of America AFL-CIO Better Markets Center for American Progress Americans for Financial Reform November 21, 2018 Dear Chairman Clayton: We are writing to express our grave concerns regarding PCAOB staff guidance on Rule 3526(b),
The AFR Education Fund wrote to the FDIC urging them to maintain comprehensive disclosure requirements for securitizations that are backed by depository banks. The agency is proposing to exempt private offerings from these requirements. Most of the toxic mortgage securitizations sold prior to the financial crisis were private offerings.
On July 23, 2019, AFR Education Fund submitted a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opposing a proposal that would create exemptions that would permit U.S. banks – and international banks active in the U.S. market – to do large-scale derivatives dealing in the U.S. without being designated as derivatives dealers under Dodd-Frank Act rules.