Fighting for the right for all Americans to have their day in court, Better Markets joined lots of other advocacy groups in a letter to SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, urging him to reject a pending attempt to take away shareholders’ rights to recovery when ripped off and to force them into secret, biased arbitration proceedings where […]
Phony IPO Drought Now A Flood Remember all those stories about how there were no IPOs in the US and the SEC had to deregulate even more, supposedly to attract IPOs? This was, of course, just the latest baseless pretext for deregulation among the deregulation zealots who will use anything to hide their agenda behind. […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, December 26, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, issued the following statement in response to increasing speculation about the impact of computer trading on the stock market swings and precipitous drop: “Treasury Secretary Mnuchin along with many others have […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, December 24, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] TRUMP, MNUCHIN SHOULD REQUIRE SEC TO LAUNCH THE CONSOLIDATED AUDIT TRAIL (CAT) TO POLICE MARKETS AND STOP NEEDLESS COMPUTER-DRIVEN ALGO TRADING AND VOLATILITY Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, issued the following statement in response to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s concerns about the role of computers in […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, December 19, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Lev Bagramian, Senior Securities Policy Advisor for Better Markets issued this statement following approval of a pilot study on stock trading fees: “Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission moved to conduct a pilot study on the impact of legalized […]
By Stephen Hall (this op-ed first appeared in Law360 on November 30, 2018) Consider the following scenario: An investment banker circulates multiple emails to investors knowing that they contain three outright lies: (1) that the company seeking funds “has over $10 million in confirmed assets;” (2) that the company “has purchase orders and letters of intent for over […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, November 14, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] THE ACID TEST FOR THE SEC’S MISSION CRITICAL CAT TOOL IS TOMORROW SEC MUST HOLD CONFLICTED INDUSTRY-LED EFFORT ACCOUNTABLE FOR UNACCEPTABLE DELAYS AND PROMPTLY TAKE MEANINGFUL ACTION Washington, D.C. – Better Markets President and CEO, Dennis Kelleher, issued the following statement on […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, November 5, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] THE CFTC’S SWAP EXECUTION FACILITIES (SEF) PROPOSAL RISKS RETURNING TO THE UNREGULATED SWAPS MARKET THAT CAUSED THE 2008 CRASH Washington, D.C. – Better Markets President and CEO, Dennis Kelleher, issued the following statement on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) proposed changes to the […]
Updated: February 16, 2021 Background The Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) system promises to be game-changer for the SEC and would revolutionize the Commission’s capabilities to protect investors, facilitate capital formation and promote fair and orderly capital markets – on which job creators and savers, and indeed all Americans, depend. The CAT system will be the […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, October 18, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] WHAT HAS THE SEC LEARNED FROM ITS INVESTOR TESTING AND WHY WASN’T IT CONDUCTED SOONER? BETTER MARKETS FILES FOIA REQUEST TO FIND OUT Washington, D.C. – Following today’s filing of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for all […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, October 1, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Following the settlement between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, issued this statement: “The SEC settlement with Tesla and its CEO is a meaningless slap on the […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, September 6, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Following the announcement from the five Federal financial agencies responsible for oversight and enforcement of the Volcker Rule that they were extending the deadline for comments on proposed changes to the rule, Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better […]
By Stephen W. Hall, Legal Director & Securities Specialist (appeared on Medium first) Every American expects and deserves at least one thing from their broker: objective financial advice that serves their best interest. But that’s not what usually happens. Instead, for decades, brokers have been allowed to recommend investments that pad their own wallets with […]
By Lev Bagramian In March of this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission, in a significant move, proposed a pilot to study “Transaction Fees” that equity exchanges impose on all those who trade on those exchanges. In a comment letter, we argued that fundamental market structure problems, particularly deeply rooted conflicts of interest, will not […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, August 17th, 2018 Contact: Brandon Richards at 202-618-6433 or at [email protected] Depriving Investors of Important Timely Information Is a Bad Idea and No Solution To Short-termism Which Is Caused by Bad Compensation Schemes Washington, DC — Better Markets’ President and CEO, Dennis Kelleher, issued the following statement in response to President Trump’s […]
The SEC Is Supposed to Protect Investors, Not Take Away Their Rights, Force Them into Secret, Unfair & Biased Arbitration Proceedings, and Let Corporations Keep Tens of Billions of Dollars Stolen From Investors In a recent interview with Politico Pro, SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce shared her thoughts on a wide range of topics, including her view […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, August 07, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] SEC’s Investment Advice Rule Needs An Overhaul Washington, D.C. – Stephen W. Hall, Legal Director and Securities Specialist for Better Markets, issued this statement following submission of Better Markets’ comment letter on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) investment advice rule proposals: “Every […]
The Dodd Frank financial reform and consumer protection act had three core goals: Prevent financial crashes, Wall Street bailouts and another Great Recession; Protect consumers and investors from being ripped off; and Refocus finance back to funding the real economy, supporting jobs, growth and prosperity, not high risk, socially useless activities to boost their bonuses […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, July 10, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Better Markets, Public Citizen, Americans for Financial Reform, and the Center for American Progress have sent a letter calling for an additional 90 days for the public to comment to the five federal financial regulators who have proposed rolling […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, June28, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Lev Bagramian, Senior Securities Policy Advisor for Better Markets issued this statement following a vote by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to give itself discretion to determine whistleblower program rewards: “Today, the SEC voted to give itself authority that […]
The wisdom and effectiveness of the Volcker Rule’s ban on proprietary trading can be seen since it was put into place: it has forced banks to shift from bonus-boosting but reckless short-term trading to socially useful lending to the real economy. That financial activity is why taxpayers back banks in the first place: to support and enable economic growth […]
Signaling a retreat from the more frequent and substantial sanctions imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the past, a new report shows that enforcement activities by the SEC continued to fall in the first half of Fiscal Year 2018. According to the report by Cornerstone Research, the SEC filed just 15 new enforcement actions against public […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, May 30, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, issued this statement following the release of proposed changes to the Volcker Rule: “The Volcker Rule bans taxpayer backed banks from dangerous, destabilizing, high-risk and socially useless gambling called proprietary trading. It’s […]
Why Put Taxpayers on the Hook by Allowing High Risk, Bonus-boosting Gambling Called “Proprietary Trading” at Wall Street’s Biggest Banks? Want to go to Las Vegas with someone else’s credit card with no limit and you get to keep all the winnings and they pay all the losses? Who wouldn’t want that deal! That’s what […]
By Lev Bagramian This Sunday marks the 8th anniversary of the “Flash Crash,” when nearly one trillion dollars of stock market value was temporarily wiped out from investors’ accounts. This confidence-shattering event took just 18 minutes to unfold and saw some stocks inexplicably plummet to $1 per share while others skyrocketed to more than $100,000 […]
Fed Vice Chairman for Supervision Randy Quarles in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee made it clear that the pace of deregulation will be increasing at the key financial regulatory agencies. The previous week, the Fed had released proposals on the Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR) and the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and […]
When you put your hard-earned money at risk by providing it to a broker for advice, shouldn’t he or she have to act in your best interest when giving you that advice? That would be a fiduciary duty and we think that should be the law, but it is not. The law today allows brokers to portray themselves as trusted advisers […]
This morning, Securities Exchange Committee (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton will be testifying before a House Appropriations Subcommittee to discuss the fiscal priorities of the SEC for the 2019 Fiscal Year. Though it is centered around appropriations, Congress also has an opportunity to ask the chair of the SEC questions surrounding a number of important topics. Here […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, April 18, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, issued this statement following the release of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) investment advice rule proposal: “The SEC exists to protect investors and the law should unambiguously require investment professionals […]
By Lev Bagramian There are plenty of indications that the SEC is earnestly working to propose a fiduciary duty rule for broker-dealers. Last June, essentially as his first act as the Chairman of the SEC, Mr. Jay Clayton requested information to better inform and facilitate the staff’s efforts in drafting a fiduciary duty rule proposal. […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, March 16, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – The executive directors of Public Citizen and Better Markets, two of the nation’s leading organizations protecting investors, called on U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Jay Clayton to reject any proposals that would allow publicly traded companies to […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, March 14, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, issued this statement following the SEC’s announcement of a pilot program on rebates offered by exchanges to attract orders, also known as maker-taker: “In a victory for retail and long-term investors, […]
By Lev Bagramian When we launched this blog, we promised that we would pay attention to the work of the federal advisory committees. Here, we provide an important backgrounder on these committees at the SEC, and later, we’ll analyze some of their specific recommendations. Federal advisory committees can, in principle, offer a broad range of […]
By Lev Bagramian High frequency traders (HFT) and their supporters have for a long time claimed that HFT adds liquidity to the market and provides market-making that’s beneficial to investors, stabilizes prices, and narrows spreads. A recent study, using data from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), which covers nearly 90% of all securities trade in […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, February 12, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, issued this statement on President Trump’s 2019 budget requests for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC): “We applaud the Trump Administration’s 2019 budget requests […]
By Lev Bagramian Today, companies with sizable financing needs have a multitude of options. They can borrow from banks, from business development companies, or from private funds; they can issue equities through crowdfunding; or they can raise up to $50 million a year through what’s known as “Reg A+”, along with other options. Importantly, they […]
One of the most consequential events during the 2008 financial crisis was when the Reserve Primary Fund “broke the buck” right after Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy. The result was a run on money market funds (MMF) which quickly had dire ripple effects throughout the financial system and in the real economy. To stop the […]
By Lev Bagramian As the front-line regulator of broker-dealers, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) – Congressionally-charged and overseen by the SEC – has the important duty of protecting investors and maintaining their trust and confidence in the securities markets. Every time an investor’s life savings are obliterated by fraud or eaten away by conflicts of […]
By Lev Bagramian Many in the financial services industry and their misguided allies have tried, and are still trying to kill the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT). The CAT is a supercomputer and a massive database that will allow regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to monitor our ever-evolving markets. The SEC would do […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, January 10, 2018 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Recognizing the changing regulatory landscape, Better Markets is today launching a new blog to offer insights and perspectives on how these changes will impact both investors and markets. The new blog (hosted at https://bettermarkets.org/spotlight-series-investors-and-markets) will be called “Spotlight Series: […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, November 15, 2017 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, issued this statement following the transmission of the attached letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton and the other SEC Commissioners, applauding his decision not to delay […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, October 31, 2017 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Stephen W. Hall, Better Markets Legal Director & Securities Specialist, released the following statement on the amicus brief filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in support of whistleblower protections: “The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) understands that […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, October 4, 2017 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] To: Editors and Reporters Covering SEC Chairman Clayton’s Testimony Before the House Financial Services Committee From: Lev Bagramian, Senior Securities Policy Advisor Subject: Issues to Watch For in Today’s Hearing In advance of SEC Chairman Jay Clayton’s oversight hearing before the House Financial […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, September 26, 2017 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, issued the following statement on SEC Chairman Jay Clayton’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee regarding corporate disclosure of computer hacks: “The American people are extremely concerned about the epidemic of […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, September 26, 2017 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] TO: Editors and Reporters Covering SEC Chairman Clayton’s Testimony Before Senate Banking Committee FROM: Lev Bagramian, Senior Securities Policy Advisor SUBJECT: Issues to Watch for in Today’s Hearing Before Senate Banking In advance of SEC Chairman Jay Clayton’s first oversight hearing before […]
A new report by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s professional staff demolishes industry claims that Dodd-Frank and the Volcker Rule have harmed capital formation and liquidity. The exhaustive report[1]covers over 300 pages and “includes a comprehensive assessment of a large body of recent research in addition to original analysis performed by [SEC] staff.” The combination of […]
When writing the laws governing our securities markets, Congress determined that the commission of certain illegal, fraudulent, or criminal acts should trigger not only fines, restitution orders, and injunctions, but also automatic disqualification from certain regulatory privileges. So, firms that violate the law lose the privilege of raising capital through streamlined private offerings and are […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, July 20, 2017 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, released the following statement on the release of the SEC’s regulatory agenda: “Mr. and Ms. 401(k) would not be happy about the new regulatory agenda published by the SEC today. While […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, May 2, 2017 Contact: Nick Jacobs, 202-618-6430 or [email protected] Washington, D.C. – Upon the expected Senate confirmation later today of Mr. Jay Clayton’s nomination to become the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, President and CEO of Better Markets released the following statement: “The Securities and Exchange Commission’s new Chairman, […]
Too often in Washington when the heat is on an agency for something the public is focused it creates a committee rather than doing anything real or meaningful about the problem. The result is the appearance of action and a commitment to crafting good policy, but the reality is kicking the can down the road […]
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