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Davis Polk today announced that Robert Cohen will join the firm as a partner in the Litigation Department in Washington DC. Mr. Cohen will be a member of the firm’s White Collar Criminal Defense and Government Investigations Group, where he will focus on representing companies and boards in regulatory matters and internal investigations. He joins […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Robert A. Cohen, Chief of the Division of Enforcement’s Cyber Unit, will be leaving the agency in August after 15 years of service. Mr. Cohen is the first Chief of the Cyber Unit, created in 2017. The unit focuses on violations involving digital assets and cryptocurrency, cyber-related trading […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Kevin A. Zerrusen will serve as Chairman Jay Clayton’s Senior Advisor for Cybersecurity Policy. In this role, Mr. Zerrusen will coordinate efforts across the agency to address cybersecurity policy, engage with external stakeholders, and help enhance the SEC’s mechanisms for assessing cyber-related risks. via SEC.gov | SEC Announces […]
Mr. Clayton added that the SEC has worked to enhance its cybersecurity defenses in the wake of the hack, turning to other government agencies and outside consultants to “bolster our cybersecurity defenses and reduce our cyber risk profile.” The fallout from the hack has changed the SEC’s approach to cybersecurity both for the SEC itself […]
What a mess. Let the onslaught of scrutiny begin, which in my opinion will undoubtedly include an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the federal regulator tasked with policing the disclosures to shareholders by public companies like Google. But what precisely will the SEC want to know? Assuming I am right about […]
Five years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a rule requiring investment firms to pay attention to identity theft. It never enforced it — until late last month. In a cease-and-desist order against Voya Financial Advisors, the investment advisory unit of Voya Financial, the commission used the “Identity Theft Red Flags Rule” to censure […]
The Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently started to examine the capabilities of domestic organizations to fend off attempted cyberattacks and respond quickly to successful ones to ensure the confidence of investors, limited partners, and public markets in general. Since these attacks can be […]
In the space of 2 months, the SEC went from “Companies also may have disclosure obligations” for breaches to paying $35 million for failure to disclose. When the expectations change so quickly, it is important for companies to think strategically not only about where enforcement action has been but where it is going. It is […]
If there was ever a regulatory grace period for virtual currencies and blockchain technology, it is officially over. Five federal regulators—The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the US Treasury Department (FinCEN), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control […]
Warding off market cheaters in digital currencies is among the Securities and Exchange Commission’s major concerns as it monitors those assets, according to Brett Redfearn, head of the regulator’s Division of Trading and Markets. “We are concerned about a lot of the issues around manipulation, whether it’s spoofing, or any other forms of market manipulation […]
Notice to all cryptocurrency exchanges: Be prepared for a relentless U.S. regulatory onslaught. That seems to be the clear warning embodied in three actions taken last week by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at the U.S. Department of the Treasury; and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission is expanding its focus from the companies developing initial coin offerings to the hundreds of lawyers who are guiding them through regulatory gray areas. The industry argues it doesn’t fit neatly into existing legal frameworks as global regulators consider whether virtual tokens might be securities — which require strict regulatory […]
Issuers, promoters, curators, sponsors, facilitators, so-called “finders,” investment banks, law firms, affiliates and anyone else connected to Internet Coin Offerings (“ICOs”), the method by which startups or other parties can issue cryptographic tokens in an effort to fund or bootstrap a new blockchain network, should be on notice. Thanks to a range of U.S. securities statutes, […]
The vulnerability of governments and businesses to cyberattacks was exposed again Wednesday when a top U.S. financial regulator said hackers had breached its electronic database of market-moving corporate announcements, and may have profited from the information they stole. The hack of an aspect of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Edgar filing system occurred in […]
Fall is upon us and, even in an election year, it’s not too early to begin thinking about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement priorities for 2017. Regarding data protection, we predict that the SEC will continue to focus on cybersecurity and may even mandate that financial firms share information regarding cyber threats to maintain […]