Archive for the 'SEC stuff' Category

On Wednesday the SEC released its second-ever ”ComplianceAlert.” (Gee, what ever happened to spaces between words?) The alert, addressed to SEC-regulated firms (e.g. broker-dealers and investment advisers), used a low-key tone but raised serious issues. For example, SEC examiners found some large broker-dealers to be surprisingly sloppy about verifying the values their trading desks assign to subprime mortgage-related products.
It’s disturbing to [...]

It’s only been a week since the SEC decided to “enhance investor protections” against naked short selling by limiting the practice at 19 companies, primarily large financial institutions including Lehman (LEH) and Citigroup (C). As Reuters reported over the weekend, the American Bankers Association thought that the new rule should be applied to all publicly [...]

There’s so much going on this morning, that it’s hard to know where to focus one’s attention. There’s the  rescue of Fannie and Freddie, the deal for Anheuser-Busch (BUD) and yet another Powerpoint in the ongoing Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and Carl Icahn saga.
But at times like this, it’s always good to stick to [...]

Back in May 2005, the SEC began releasing comment letters on its site. But three years later, the system still doesn’t quite work because the only time they become available on the SEC site is after whatever issue the SEC is concerned about has already been resolved.
I thought about this while reading the revised 10K [...]

We interrupt our regular trawl through the filings to talk about something that’s been on my mind all week: what happens when someone uses a popular Internet site to bash a company and basically games the market. I’ve been interested in this ever since I first wrote about online message boards for the NY Times [...]