Sunday, April 15, 2012
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Thursday, March 22, 2012
Employment Recruitment Agencies Are Now More Affordable Than Ever
There is no doubt that the economic meltdown is affecting all companies, whether they are billion dollar empires like AIG or smaller operations like community medical centers. One of the trends that are becoming more and more popular during this economic situation is that of employing employment recruitment agencies. Companies across industries are beginning to [...]
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Legal Recruiters: How Legal Headhunters Help Find the Best Talent
The legal system is at the foundation of our nation and if affects companies just as it affects society at large. Every company needs the expert advice and services from members of the legal profession from time to time. The need to hire the best and most competent lawyers has increased over a period of [...]
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Boogie Investment Group to Call It Quits
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) recently received a withdrawal request from Boogie Investment Group, a small brokerage house that sold failed Provident Royalties private placements to its investors. Of the 52 brokerage houses that sold Provident private placements, Boogie Investment is the eleventh to call it quits this year. Private placements amounting to roughly [...]
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FINRA REACTS TO SEC CHARGES THAT IT MISHANDLED DOCUMENTS
According to the October 11 issue of Investment News, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a complaint against the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), alleging that requested staff meeting minutes were altered by a FINRA director before they were delivered to the SEC in August 2008. The alterations, according to the SEC, rendered [...]
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Even the Government Turns to Recruiting Agencies To Find the Best Employees
Would you be surprised if I told you that a website which helps people find government jobs actually has a page that lists the names of executive search firms that can be approached for the jobs? You hardly expect government agencies to also depend on services of recruiting agencies, but it is nonetheless true.
Government Sectors [...]
Government Sectors [...]
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Small capital Non-Recourse loan
The Small Capital Non-Recourse Loan program for small businesses. This program was designed to assist those clients who need funding from $50k to $10M and who cannot qualify for conventional bank financing, for a variety of reasons such as bad or no credit, not having the required equity to contribute, which at the current time [...]
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ATTORNEY JOB OF THE WEEK
We represent insurance companies with immediate needs for attorneys in all forms of tort litigation, including auto accident and slip-and-fall accident injury claims, products liability, medical malpractice claims, business disputes, oil-field contamination claims, and related matters to provide them with defense services.
The attorneys will draft and file responses to lawsuits on behalf of clients, locate [...]
The attorneys will draft and file responses to lawsuits on behalf of clients, locate [...]
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Deficit "Super Committee" Transparency - Will We Get to See the Budgetary Sausage in Production?
By Stefan C. Passantino and Benjamin P. Keane
Whether you agree with Justice Brandeis that sunlight is the “best of disinfectants” or with former American League of Lobbyists president Dave Wenhold that “too much sunlight causes cancer”, it should be readily apparent to the readers of this blog that public officials of all stripes have increasingly begun to listen to the chorus of voices calling out for more transparency in all levels of government. At PaytoPlayLawBlog, we often write about how the push for greater transparency at the federal, state and local levels is affecting the operation of government, as well as the interaction of the public with government officials. As strictly objective, rational observers (ahem), it seems to us that disclosure alone generally trumps both inaction and punitive regulation in the pay-to-play space. Over the past month or so, we have come to see new evidence of this welcome push for openness at the federal level, particularly with regard to the activities of the newly-formed Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (or the so-called Deficit “Super Committee”).
For those who have spent all of their time recently tracking satellite orbits and running calcu lations on their chance of having to make a potentially uncovered hom eowners claim, the Super Committee is a balanced delegation of six Democrats and six Republicans (split evenly between members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate) formed in August of this year as a means of permitting Congress and the White House the opportunity to avoid responsibility for identifying an additional $1.5 trillion in federal budgetary cuts over the next decade. Whether one agrees with the premise of granting 12 Members of Congress such extraordinary authority over federal, fiscal decision making, it is readily apparent that the ongoing work of the Super Committee has drawn a great deal of attention from political organizations and commentators across the ideological spectrum. Given the nature of the current (entirely justified) cynicism with the political process, and the enormity of the task before the Super Committee, it should not surprise readers of this blog to learn that much of this attention across the political continuum has been focused on increasing the political transparency of the Committee’s activities.
One of the more prominent efforts to accomplish this goal has been organized by the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to using the “power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency.” On August 3, 2011, the Foundation issued a letter to congressional leadership urging them to adopt a series of recommendations that the Foundation believes will ensure the Super Committee operates in a fully open and transparent manner. Those recommendations included: (1) holding live webcasts of all official Committee meetings and hear ings; (2) posting the Committee’s draft recommendations for at least 72 hours prior to a final committee vote; (3) promoting disclosure of every meeting held by Committee members with lobbyists and other “powerful interests”; (4) ensuring the immediate disclosure of all campaign contributions received by Committee members during their service on the Committee; and (5) demanding additional financial disclosure standards for Committee members and their staffers. In addition, the Foundation has teamed up with various transparency activists and supporters to launch a grassroots campaign designed to encourage greater accountability and openness from the Super Committee. The movement’s allies in this endeavor include such left-leaning organizations as The Bre nnan Center for Justice, the Project on Government Oversight, and Public Citizen.
Although not necessarily backing each of the Sunlight Foundation’s specific recommendations, many organizations and individuals on the conservative and libertarian end of the political spectrum have also echoed the Foundation’s calls for transparency in Super Committee activities. For example, Jim Harper of the CATO Institute and Rob Bluey of The Heritage Fou ndation’s Center for Media and Public Policy have both recently demanded that the Super Committee permit open public access to Committee meetings and legislative proposals as a means of ensuring that all citizens are kept abreast of the activities of this uniquely powerful legislative panel. Along those same lines, Harper and Bluey have also called for Committee transparency as a safeguard against the passage of expansive legislation that is subject to little or no debate or public input.
All of this makes perfect sense. As we have previously observed here, efforts to govern matters such as this from behind closed doors can lead to embarrassing exchanges.
Bi-partisan support for greater Super Committee transparency has even begun to emerge within Congress itself. In fact, in early September, Representatives Mike Quigley (D-IL), Dave Loebsack (D-IA), and Jim Renacci (R-OH) introduced H.R. 2860, the Deficit Committee Transparency Act, which would implement six transparency reforms along the lines of those recommended by the Sunlight Foundation. Similarly, Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Dean Heller (R-NV) have also introduced two separate bills, S. 1501 (the Budget Control Joint Committee Transparency Act) and S. 1498 (the Super Committee Sunshine Act), that are designed to ensure the openness of Super Committee meetings and greater transparency in the political fundraising of Committee members.
At present, none of the aforementioned bills have been acted upon in Congress, but there does appear to be growing support on both sides of the political aisle for a more open and forthright framework for Super Committee action. Recognizing the growing momentum in support of such transparency, the Committee has taken the initial step of keeping its three preliminary meetings open to the public (and also available for video review over the Internet). It remains to be seen, however, whether this policy will continue as the Committee gets deeper into the task of formulating its deficit-reduction proposals. Likewise, it remains to be seen whether any of the other aforementioned transparency proposals will gain any traction with the Committee itself. Stay tuned in the coming months to find out.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The SEC's Newly Proposed Rules on Derivative "Swaps"
This effort to regulate conduct in the derivative swap market by the SEC emerges out of the Dodd-Frank Act's comprehensive framework for monitoring over-the-counter swaps and the activities of “security-based swap dealers” and “major security-based swap participants” that engage in security-based swap transactions with counterparties (including “special entities” such as federal agencies, states and political subdivisions, employee benefit plans, governmental plans, and endowments). The rules the SEC advanced this week would require swap dealers to disclose to their buyers the risks associated with transactions, the potential conflicts of interests involved, and the day-to-day values of their swaps, which would aid purchasers in assessing the overall worth of specific deals.&nbs p; The rules would also mandate that swap dealers doing business with special entities ensure that their counterparts use independent financial advisers to assist with transactions. Additionally, dealers would be prohibited from participating in a wide range of “pay to play” practices.
Under these new pay to play rules, securities-based swap dealers and their “covered associates” would specifically be barred from engaging in swap transactions with a “municipal entity” for a two-year period if they choose to make certain types of political contributions to officials of that municipal entity. This Proposed Rule 15Fh-6 is modeled on, and intended to complement, existing restrictions on pay to play practices under Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-5, which imposes restrictions on political contributions by investment advisers providin g or seeking to provide investment advisory services to public pensio n plans and other government investors, and MSRB Rules G-37 and G-38, which impose such restrictions on municipal securities dealers and broker-dealers engaging or seeking to engage in the municipal securities business. The pay to play restrictions are also similar to rules the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently proposed for non-securities-based swaps.
According to SEC Chairwoman Mary L. Schapiro, these new pay to play provisions and the other business conduct standards in the proposed rules will work to “level the playing field in the securities-based swap market by bringing needed transparency to this market and by seeking to ensure that customers in these transactions are treated fairly.” That is yet to be seen, but all five SEC commissioners nevertheless voted unanimously to propose the rules and introduce them through formal public notice. The proposed rules will remain open for public comment until August 29, at which point the SEC will take any submitted remarks under advisement and make a final vote as to their implementation.
It will be interesting to see how business leaders and public officials alike react to the SEC’s proposal during the upcoming notice and comment period. Businesses, and in particular investment firms, have had to adjust to a litany of newly proposed regulations and pay to pay rules in the wake of the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act. As such, it has left companies universally unsure as to what types of activities are permitted and prohibited in their day-to-day business. Public officials, however, have been quick to applaud any and all efforts by the federal government and its numerous business regulatory bodies to restrain “unsavory” corporate practices – practices that the SEC, MSRB, CFTC, and other entities assert have contributed to the current economic downturn and led to the misappropriation of billions upon billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Over the next few months, we shall see if both trends continue and if the movement toward increas ed federal regulation of business conduct and political speech persists.
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California's New "Habit" of Pay-to-Play Regulation in the Public Employee Pension Fund Arena
By Stefan C. Passantino & Benjamin P. Keane
If it takes three times to make something a habit, it is safe to say that “pay-to-play” legislation in the State of California is getting to be a bit habitual. For the third time in as many years, the California State Legislature has decided to ripple the “pay-to-play” regulatory waters by passing an “urgency” measure designed to clarify and modify the state’s existing restrictions on investment managers and investment placement agents who do business with California’s public employee pension funds, such as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS). The new piece of legislation, Senate Bill 398 (SB 398), was signed into law on October 9, 2011 by Governor Jerry Brown, and is designed to complement two other recently-passed bills regulating the activities of pension fund investment managers.
The first of those recently-passed bills was Assembly Bill 1584 (AB 1584), which was passed by the state legislature in 2009 as part of an effort to increase transparency in the management of public employee pension fund assets. Specifically, AB 1584 required all California pension funds to adopt disclosure policies that would require the reporting of all campaign contributions and gifts made to pension fund board and staff members by “placement agents” and external investm ent managers. Likewise, the bill mandated that all outside investment managers disclose information regarding the fees they pay to placement agents for the purpose of securing asset management business opportunities with state and local pension funds across California.
The second of those complementary pieces of legislation was Assembly Bill 1743 (AB 1743), which was passed by the state legislature in 2010 as part of an effort to build on the transparency provisions of AB 1584 by explicitly restricting the ability of placement agents and external investment managers to engage in pay-to-play activities associated with California’s public employee pension funds. As this blog highlighted at the time of the bill’s passage, AB 1743 placed a broad swath of placement agents, external investment managers, and external investment management firm staff under an obligation to register as lobbyists with the State of California. In addition, AB 1743 banned these same individuals from making campaign contributions to the elected board members of California’s pension funds and prohibited them from setting up contingency fee arrangements to manage such pension fund assets.
While not as groundbreaking as either AB 1584 or AB1743, SB 398 does build upon each of those bills and make some noteworthy changes to California’s pay-to-play regulatory framework for pension fund placement agents and external investment managers. Specifically, SB 398 modifies existing law in the following ways:
· The bill revises the definition of the terms “external manager”, “placement agent”, “investment fund”, and “investment vehicle” to clarify that almost all managers of securities and assets for California public employee pension funds, whether directly or through managed funds, are subject to the disclosure and lobbyist registration rules put in place by AB 1743 for external managers and placement agents. Despite this fact, however, SB 398 does exempt investment management companies that are registered with the Secur ities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pursuant to the Investment Company Act of 1940 and that make public offerings of their securities from having to comply with the statutory disclosure and registration standards.
· The bill extends AB 1743’s “safe harbor” exemption from state-level lobbyist registration so that it also applies to local-level lobbyist registration requirements. Under AB 1743’s safe harbor provision, investment managers of public pension funds need not pursue state-level lobbying registration if they meet three separate requirements: (1) they are registered with the SEC as investment advisers or broker-dealers; (2) they obtain their pension fund business through competitive bidding processes; and (3) they agree to be subject to the Cal ifornia fiduciary standard imposed on public employee pension fund trustees. In turn, SB 398 extends a similar exemption to investment managers who would otherwise be required to register as local-level lobbyists on account of their management of local public employee pension fund assets.
Since SB 398 was passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor as an “urgency” measure, it is now the active law of the land in California. It remains to be seen, however, what sort of impact it will actually have on the ethics of public pension fund asset management. While its changes will certainly have some effect on investment managers and placement agents doing business with public employee pension funds in California, it will certainly not be as significant an effect as either AB 1584 or AB 1783. After all, individuals working in the pension fund investment management business have to be slowly getting used to California’s growing pay-to-play regulation habit.
In light of this fact, perhaps the most interesting thing to watch in the wake of SB 398’s passage just might be the reaction of California localities to the extension of AB 1743’s safe-harbor exemption. How will localities with a history of tackling pay-to-play issues (like Los Angeles) react to the state’s intrusion into municipal issues such as the regulation of local public employee pension fund management? We shall see if any drama ensues in the Golden State… Stay tuned…
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Principal Protected Notes, Lehman Brothers and UBS Financial Services Arbitrations
A recent class action suit against Lehman Brothers as well as an enforcement proceeding against UBS Financial Services by New Hampshire has encouraged investors to hire investment recovery litigators and pursue claims against firms selling Lehman Brothers principal protected notes in an attempt to recoup their financial losses. According to New Hampshire?s claim, UBS engaged [...]
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Did You Experience Significant Losses with Morgan Keegan?
Morgan Keegan Fund Losses* Ticker Bond Fund 2007 2008 RMH RMK High Income Fund (-)58.0% (-)39.0% RHY RMK Multi-Sector High Income Fund (-)60.6% (-)44.5% RMA RMK Advantage Income Fund (-)56.9% (-)39.1% RSF RMK Strategic Income Fund (-)58.1% (-)42.0% RHICX RMK Select High Income-C (-)59.9% (-)45.9% MKHIX RMK Select High Income-A (-)59.7% (-)46.1% RHIIX RMK Select [...]
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Bath Towel Desserts Make Truly One-of-a-Kind Gift Ideas and Event Favors
Enjoying wedding parties, baby showers and birthday parties and such are forever amazing occasions. In such instances, you’d usually see delightful muffins as well as other favors that are typically shared to attendees. If you’re searching for other exclusive presents to give to your family and friends, why not decide on towel desserts? If you’re [...]
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