The SEC's complaint alleges that the former executive led a scheme to add secret commissions to securities trades performed for at least six clients of State Street's transition management business, which helps institutional clients move their investments between asset managers or otherwise restructure large investment portfolios.
Michael Barry, president of October Three (O3) Plan Advisory Services LLC, discusses how the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC)’s broker/investment adviser standard-of-conduct proposal would be necessary to the creation of a provider-based retirement system.
The decision puts another layer of finality on the fate of the now-defunct Department of Labor fiduciary rule expansion, meaning the compliance landscape has shifted yet again for plan sponsors.
As the Department of Labor (DOL) fiduciary rule process appears destined for defeat, experts speculate about the possibility that the SEC could take its own regulatory actions to address adviser conflict of interests; some say a new SEC rule could be proposed this week.
However, the deadlines for creating a liquidity risk management program and to limit illiquid investments to 15% of a fund’s portfolio remain unchanged: December 1, 2018, for larger fund groups and June 1, 2019, for smaller fund groups.
Brokers serving retirement plans and other institutional investors were accused of routing orders for equities to an offshore affiliate in Bermuda that “executed them on a riskless basis and opportunistically boosted profits by adding a mark-up or mark-down on the price of a security.”
A bill that would repeal much of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and block the DOL fiduciary rule has cleared the House Financial Services Committee.
The SEC says whether offering a brokerage window in a 401(k) through which investments in employer securities can be made involves an offer of employer securities requiring Securities Act registration depends on the extent of the plan sponsor’s involvement.
Focus on DOL’s fiduciary rulemaking is understandable—but
there are other major regulatory changes in the works that will directly impact
retirement plans.
Transcripts from a tough SEC hearing called earlier this
month show it's not just the Department of Labor considering changes to the
application of the fiduciary standard.
A bipartisan group of U.S. House members penned an open letter to the Department of Labor that demands more detail be shared about the ongoing fiduciary redefinition effort.
A
number of elected officials have emerged on the side of financial advisers in
opposing the Department of Labor’s fiduciary redefinition effort—introducing ambitious
legislation to block changes to the fiduciary standard.