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Full-Text Articles in Law

Embrace The Sec, Usha Rodrigues Jan 2020

Embrace The Sec, Usha Rodrigues

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Securities law traditionally only permits corporations that have registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and completed an initial public offering (IPO) to sell equity to the general public—often a long, expensive process. Initial coin offering (ICOs) emerged in 2013 as a fundraising tool for non-public blockchain-based companies to raise billions of dollars while circumventing the SEC and public offering process altogether. But their early success brought the attention of the SEC, and in 2017 the SEC asserted the right to regulate ICOs. Since then, U.S. ICO promoters have struggled to avoid the SEC’s assertion of jurisdiction, contorting their …


The Fate Of State Investor Protection, Benjamin P. Edwards Jan 2020

The Fate Of State Investor Protection, Benjamin P. Edwards

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In June 2019, the Securities & Exchange Commission made significant changes to the regulation of investment advice, issuing regulations and new interpretations of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Industry advocates have argued that states lack power to enact their own regulations on the theory that various federal statutes and regulations combine to preempt and sharply limit state authority. This article examines the current state of reforms around the country and the policy and legal arguments for and against limiting state efforts to raise the standards for investment advice.


Adversarial Failure, Benjamin P. Edwards Jan 2020

Adversarial Failure, Benjamin P. Edwards

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Investors, industry firms, and regulators all rely on vital public records to assess risk and evaluate securities industry personnel. Despite the information's importance, an arbitration-facilitated expungement process now regularly deletes these public records. Often, these arbitrations recommend that public information be deleted without any true adversary ever providing any critical scrutiny to the requests. In essence, poorly informed arbitrators facilitate removing public information out of public databases. Interventions aimed at surfacing information may yield better informed decisions. Although similar problems have emerged in other contexts when adversarial systems break down, the expungement process to purge information about financial professionals provides …