Chief compliance officers (CCOs) at registered investment advisers (RIAs) investing in cryptoassets shouldn’t take the recent no-action letter (NAL) from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowing them to select state-chartered trust companies (STCs) as qualified custodians lightly. The U.S. regulatory agency’s decision allows RIAs to breathe a sigh of relief they will not […]
FASTER Refunds for EU Withholding Taxes
Operations managers at custodian banks, broker-dealers, and other financial intermediaries, will soon face new administrative challenges and legal liability to secure quicker refunds of excess withholding taxes paid by investors in cross-border transactions for securities issued in the European Union (EU). Among the top concerns mentioned by attendees at the recent Americas Meeting event held […]
DTCC Prepares Wall Street For New Cyberbreach Rule
Cybersecurity information security officers (CISOs) at U.S. broker-dealers and banks may soon need to overhaul their governance programs if the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has its way. US financial firms are in a logjam with DTCC’s subsidiaries, Depository Trust Company (DTC), (National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC), and Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC), over […]
Canada’s High Court to Rule on SS&C’s Spoilation Against BNY
“Failure to preserve and produce relevant documents is conduct worthy of censure” wrote Justice William Hourigan of the Court of Appeal for Ontario in the court’s scathing September 2024 ruling against The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, now called BNY, for breach of contract with SS&C Technologies Canada Corp. He went on to say that […]
Reducing Risk of Trade Secret Theft
Have we sufficiently protected our proprietary source codes? That is the question chief compliance officers, general counsel, and technology directors at Wall Street powerhouses should know how to answer if they want to avoid the fate of Headlands Technologies LLC (HT) , a global quantitative trading firm in the midst of civil and criminal litigation involving […]
Drug Cartels As Foreign Terrorists: AML Spotlight
US President Donald Trump’s decision in January to classify drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists has put anti-money laundering compliance executives at US financial institutions doing business in Latin America on high alert when it comes to their AML programs. Based on the US Department of State including eight drug […]
Business of Human Rights in New EU Reg
Oversight of third-party vendors will soon take on a new human rights twist for many local and foreign financial firms doing business in the European Union thanks to the new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. The European legislation, otherwise called CS3D, forces firms to impose a moral code of conduct on their direct and indirect […]
SEC Exams 2025: T+1 Post-Mortem?
T+1 settlement isn’t over for the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Chief compliance officers at US fund management firms and broker-dealers must be prepared to show how they are meeting the challenge of a one-day settlement cycle, otherwise known as T+1 settlement, if requested by an examiner from the SEC next year. The onus appears […]
SEC’s Short Sale Reporting Rule Comes Up Short
Fund management firms, soon required to report their short sale positions with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, could end up scrambling at the last minute to make the necessary operational changes while praying the regulatory agency agrees with their interpretations of some of its unclear requirements. Buy-side firms appear to be hoping the SEC […]
BNY Hit With Final US$11M Fine For SS&C Contract Breach
SS&C Technologies Canada Corp. has won only US$11 million instead of the US$890 million it wanted, but it still scored a final moral victory against Bank of New York Mellon for violating the terms of its market data contract with the financial technology giant. The Ontario Court of Appeal let stand a lower trial court’s […]