7 Ugly Truths About Compliance: a Primer for New Chief Compliance Officers
Being a Chief Compliance Officer is an important job but before you accept the offer, there a few things you should know. Enjoy!
Predictions for 2025: What Private Fund Advisers Can Expect from SEC Examinations
There has been a lot of conjecture that the SEC may become friendlier to registrants because of the new administration. Given the SEC’s mandate to protect the investing public, however, we do not expect SEC examiners to become more lenient on private equity and hedge fund managers. Instead, we anticipate SEC staff becoming less focused on “rulemaking through enforcement” and (hopefully) imposing more moderate sanctions than those under Chair Gensler. SEC examiners now, more than ever, feel the pressure to show their value.
SEC3 Gets Readers’ Choice Award for Thought Leadership in Compliance from JD Supra
SEC Compliance Consulting, Inc. (SEC3) has been recognized for its thought leadership in the compliance space by JD Supra, as part of its 2025 Readers’ Choice Awards. The Readers’ Choice Awards recognize top authors and firms read by C-suite executives, in-house counsel, media, and other professionals across the JD Supra platform during 2024. This year’s awards recognize 344 authors selected from among the more than 70,000 who published on the platform during 2024, highlighting firms for their thought leadership across 33 main topics.
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Form ADV Season
Check out our latest tips on updating your Form ADV.
Regulatory Roundup for January 2025
Welcome to our January 2025 Regulatory Roundup, where we provide practical advice on the latest regulatory headlines. We start this issue with the appointment of the SEC’s acting Chair, Mark Uyeda. Next, we recap the SEC’s report on its aggressive enforcement efforts in the first quarter of 2025. Finally, we discuss a few of the latest SEC settlement orders, including issuers getting fined for failing to file Form D for unregistered offerings, two cases on fiduciary duty fails, and one more “off-channel” communications case that highlights what a firm did right (for once). Enjoy!
Lessons from 2024: Tips for Private Fund Managers
As we look back on the SEC’s actions in 2024, we wanted to share our thoughts on lessons learned that we believe will carry through to 2025.
Regulatory Roundup for December 2024
Welcome to our December 2024 Regulatory Roundup, where we provide practical advice on the latest regulatory headlines. We start this issue with the SEC’s 2024 enforcement results, which fell somewhat short after its 2023 banner year. We also say goodbye to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who tendered his resignation after Donald J. Trump won his presidential bid. Given the president-elect’s views on government, I expect the next chair to have a less aggressive regulatory agenda. For firms following the ongoing drama in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals about the Corporate Transparency Act, the current answer as of December 26 is that the requirements to report Beneficial Ownership are stayed. But stay tuned since that answer may change once again. Finally, I included a few enforcement cases, one on the misappropriation of client funds and two on cherry-picking. I want to highlight that in two cases, the firm was sanctioned for failure to discover and detect the nefarious activity. In the third (the cherry-picking complaint), the individual responsible, not the firm, was charged. This appears to be due, at least in part, to the efforts of the Chief Compliance Officer. The SEC highlighted the CCO’s training and messaging that emphasized the need to follow the firm’s aggregation and allocation procedures. Compliance officers should take notice.
Tips for Updating Your Compliance Program in 2025
In addition to basic blocking and tackling, compliance officers often have the thankless job of performing the annual review of their compliance program required by Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-7. As discussed in our blog post, Write the Best Annual Compliance Program Review Ever!, that review should consider changes to the Advisers Act and applicable regulations, legal proceedings and guidance from regulators, including risk alerts and interpretations. To simplify the task of collecting all of this information, I’ve identified the top regulatory hot buttons to help advisory firms update their compliance programs for 2025. This is not an exhaustive list; instead, it is the highlight reel of SEC focus areas.
Advisers’ Year-End Checklist for 2024
Compliance officers love checklists, so we’ve put together some “to dos” to consider completing before the end of the year. Enjoy! Get out Your Checkbook
Regulatory Roundup for October and November 2024
Things have perked up this month, with EXAMS’ release of its 2025 priorities and publication of a new FAQ on Form PF’s compliance deadlines. The SEC also settled with two advisers on “greenwashing” charges, presumably resulting from EXAMS promise in its 2020 Exam Priorities to review “the accuracy and adequacy of disclosures provided by RIAs offering clients new types or emerging investment strategies, such as strategies focused on sustainable and responsible investing, which incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria.” I also could not resist including two cases from September. The first case includes a textbook example of the issues raised when cross-trading illiquid fixed-income securities. The second case provides a rare example of the SEC pursuing a firm for failing to register because of operational overlap.
