Securities and Exchange Commission

WG Trading Co. Manager Pleads Guilty To $554M Securities Scam That Targeted Institutional Investors

Published on: April 29, 2014 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Stephen Walsh, a WG Trading Co. money manager and principal has pleaded guilty to bilking institutional investors of more than $554 million over a period of 13 years. Walsh and EG’s ex-general partner Paul Greenwood were charged in 2009 with allegations accusing them of using the investment advisory firm and commodities trading to perpetuate their scam, which took place between 1996 and 2009. Charities, retirement plans, pension flans, and university foundations were among those bilked.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the two men raised $7.6 million, misappropriating hundreds of millions for their personal use. They were supposed to put the money in an equity index arbitrage program, which the represented as a conservative trading plan that had done very well for years.

Investors then either got promissory notes from WG Trading Company or became limited partners. Greenwood and Walsh made it seem as if interest would be paid at a rate that was the equivalent of investment returns made by a limited partner.

SEC Says At Least 200 Private-Equity Firms Imposed Bogus Fees

Published on: April 9, 2014 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, over half of the approximately private-equity firms that it examined have charged unjustified expenses and fees to investors without their knowledge. The regulator’s findings are from its review of the $3.5 trillion industry.

It was the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that gave the SEC more oversight over money managers, which allowed the agency to scrutinize some firms for the very first time. By the end of 2012, examiners had discovered that certain advisers were wrongly collecting money from companies included in their portfolio, improperly calculating fees, and using assets from the funds to pay for their own expenses. Bloomberg reports that a source in the know about the regulator’s findings said that while some of the issues seem to stem from mistakes, others might have been intentional.

SEC to Look Even More Closely At Private Funds

Ex-Goldman Trader Tourre Must Pay $825M in Securities Fraud Involving CDO Abacus 2007-AC1

Published on: March 14, 2014 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Following a jury finding ex-former Goldman Sachs Group (GS) trader Fabrice Tourre liable for bilking investors in a synthetic collateralized debt obligation that failed, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ordered him to pay over $825,000. Tourre is one of the few persons to be held accountable for wrongdoing related to the financial crisis. In addition to $650,000 in civil fines, Tourre must surrender $185,463 in bonuses plus to interest in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against him.

The regulator accused Tourre of misleading ACA Capital Holdings Inc., which helped to select assets in the Abacus 2007-AC1, and investors by concealing the fact that Paulson & Co., a hedge fund, helped package the CDO. Tourre led them to believe that Paulson would be an equity investor, instead of a party that would go on to bet against subprime mortgages. Paulson shorted Abacus, earning about $1 billion. This is about the same amount that investors lost.

Judge Forrest noted that for the transaction to succeed, the fraud against ACA had to happen. She said that if ACA had not been the agent for portfolio selection, Goldman wouldn’t have been able to persuade others to get involved in the transaction’s equity. It was last year that the jury found Tourre liable on several charges involving Abacus.

SEC Accuses Private Equity Manager of $9M Securities Fraud

Published on: January 30, 2014 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The SEC says that Camelot Acquisitions Secondary Opportunities Management and owner Lawrence E. Penn III of stealing $9 million from a private equity fund. Also named in the securities fraud complaint are Altura Ewers and three entities, two of which are Camelot entities owned by Penn.

The regulator says that Penn, a private equity manager, reached out to overseas investors, public pension funds, and high net worth individuals to raise funds for Camelot Acquisitions Secondary Opportunities LP, a private equity fund that invests in companies that want to become public entities. He was able to get about $120 million of capital commitments.

According to the Commission, Penn paid over $9.3 million of the money to Ssecurion, a company owned by Ewer, as fake fees/ The two of them purportedly misled auditors about the fees that were supposedly related to due diligence, even forging documents up to as recently as last year.

SEC in Action: Finds Nomura Holdings Not Ineligible Issuer Even with Judgment, Will Consider Redrafted Shareholder Proposal Regarding Exelon, & Puts Out Regulation M, Rule 105 Violation Sanctions

Published on: January 8, 2014 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance has given relief to Nomura Holdings, Inc. over an entry in the final judgment issued against its subsidiary Instinet, LLC last month. The staff said that Nomura made a good cause showing under 1933 Securities Act Rule 405(2), and now the SEC says it won’t consider the company an ineligible issuer even with the entry of that final judgment.

The SEC opened up an administrative proceeding action against Instinet, accusing it of purposely abetting and aiding and violating sections of the Investment Advisers Act. The claims involved purported soft dollar payments.

J.S. Oliver Capital Management, L.P., an Instinet customer, had asked for the payments for expenses it did not tell clients about. The Commission says that Instinet made the payments per JS Oliver’s request, even though there were red flags indicating that the requests for payment approval were improper. The Nomura subsidiary turned in a settlement offer that led to a cease-and-desist order against the brokerage firm, & the regulator accepted the settlement offer.

Volcker Rule is Approved by SEC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, CFTC, and OCC

Published on: December 10, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Five regulatory agencies in the US have voted to approve the Volcker Rule. The measure establishes new hurdles for banks that engage in market timing and will limit compensation arrangements that previously provided incentive for high risk trading.

While the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation voted unanimously to approve the Volcker Rule, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved it in a 3-2 vote, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved it in a 3-1 vote, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s sole voting member also said yes. President Barack Obama praised the rule’s finalization. He believes it will improve accountability and create a safer financial system.

Named after ex-Federal Chairman Paul Volcker, the rule sets up guidelines that impose risk-taking limits for banks with federally insured deposits. It mandates that they show the way their hedging strategies are designed to function, as well as set up approval procedures for any diversions from these plans. Per the rule’s preamble, banks have to make sure hedges are geared to mitigate risks upon “inception” and this needs to be “based on analysis” regarding the appropriateness of strategies, hedging instruments, limits, techniques, as well as the correlation between the hedge and underlying risks.

SEC Considers Imposing Proxy Adviser Rules

Published on: December 7, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at whether proxy advisers have become so influential when it comes to corporate elections that rules should be imposed in them to create greater transparency. At a recent SEC-hosted meeting, brokers, institutional investors, business groups, and unions debated about the role that proxy advisors Glass Lewis & Co. LLC and Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. have played in shareholder voting.

According to Bloomberg, research from non-profit organization Conference Board reports that with the growth in institutional investors’ percent of voting shares going up by over 50% there has been a growing demand for proxy research. However, there is concern by some that proxy advisors have a lot of power over the governance decisions of public companies yet they don’t have to contend with much Commission oversight. Critics think proxy advisors influence shareholders to vote blindly on proxy measures without getting disclosures about possible conflicts. Meantime, supporters of proxy advisors say that they provide an important service—especially to small institutional investors that lack the resources to assess every vote they make.

Mutual funds, pensions, and other mutual funds tend to be proxy advisers’ typical clients. SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher attributes proxy advisers’ “outsized role” to policy guidance issued by the agency in 2009 telling investment advisers they could fulfill an obligation to vote in the best interests of shareholders by depending on third party research.

Lawyers, Investor Advocates Want to Know More About SEC Supervision Of FINRA’s Arbitrator Selections

Published on: December 2, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA) is working with consumer rights group Public Citizen to get the US Securities and Exchange Commission to release documents about its oversight of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s selection of the arbitrators who preside over disputes between broker-dealers and investors. According to PIABA President Jason Doss, because customers are “forced” into only having securities arbitration as a resolution venue when they sign documents to set up brokerage accounts (in the event of future disputes), they should be allowed to know how FINRA decides who hears the arbitration cases.

PIABA is a lawyers’ group that represents investors with securities arbitration claims. Contending that this is an issue of “transparency,” the attorneys have been trying to gain access to these documents for the last few years.

The group’s efforts started in 2010 with a Freedom of Information Act query to the SEC asking for documents that address how the regulator inspects FINRA’s process for selecting arbitrators and looking into their backgrounds. However, even though FOIA grants the public access to federal agency records, it has exemptions. (The exemption exists to protect sensitive matters, such as customer’s private financial data.)

SEC May Propose New Swaps Margins & Title VII Rules

Published on: November 11, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

At a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Trading and Markets acting director John Ramsay said that the regulator will likely consider reworking a 2012 proposal that would establish margin requirements on specific swap trades now that international financial supervisors have established new margin requirements. It was The International Organization of Securities Commissions and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision that issued the document setting up a final framework for margin requirements related to non-centrally cleared derivatives.

Ramsey said that in the wake of this document, the proposed rules that the SEC might withdraw are the ones that affect margin requirements as they pertain to certain swaps. The structure set up by the Basel-IOSCO document partially puts into place specific margin requirements on financial firms and the systematically integral non-financial entities that take part in non-centrally cleared derivatives transactions.

The regulator’s earlier proposal would have established margin requirements for security-based swap dealers and major swap participants while upping the minimum net capital requirements for brokerage firms allowed to implement the alternative internal model-based method to compute net capital. Now, however, said Ramsey, the agency could propose a new rule to make sure there is comment on a “full range of initiatives,” including the ones addressed in the Basel-IOSCO document.

Lawmakers & Industry Folk Address the DOL Amending the Definition of Fiduciary, Reg A Plus Offerings, Oversight, Rogue Brokers, and Expungement Rules

Published on: November 7, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

US House Passes A Bill Prohibiting the US Labor Department DOL From Amending Its Definition of “Fiduciary” Until SEC’s Uniform Conduct Standard is Established

A bill that would not allow the Department of Labor to amend its rules regarding the definition of the term “fiduciary” until after Securities and Exchange Commission adopts its own rule that places broker-dealers and investment advisers under a uniform standard of conduct has passed in the US House of Representatives. The DOL has been trying to revise its definition of “fiduciary” in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Those who voted to prohibit revising the definition have been worried about possibly ending up with two rulemakings that were inconsistent with one another.

Reg A Plus Offerings and Their Oversight Get Capitol Hill Debate