Mary Kissel’s breezy dismissal of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) efforts to update the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) rule (DOW JONES Political Diary, April 12, 2012,) could be easily dismissed as ideological cocktail party chatter, for its huge misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the facts and the law. Yet, there is far too […]
Knut's Views
Institute for the Fiduciary Standard to SEC: SIFMA Proposal Harms Investors
Washington, D.C. – The Institute for a Fiduciary Standard, in a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, warned that a proposal by SIFMA fails to uphold essential fiduciary principles. Fiduciary duties of loyalty and due care are replaced with broker-dealer guidance on suitable “broker sales” recommendations, support for conflicted advice, inadequate disclosure, and unrestrained […]
Rulemaking Re: Brokers, Dealer and Investment Advisers
SIFMA’s proposal departs from the fiduciary standard as set forth under the Advisers Act of 1940 and, if adopted, would be particularly harmful to retail investors.
Piling On Goldman
March 20 — Americans love it when the large and powerful get their comeuppance. So it should be no surprise, perhaps, when twelve-year Goldman veteran Greg Smith resigns from the firm in a flurry of allegations in the pages of the New York Times, a Mardi-Gras style celebration erupts. Smith makes his case that […]
Goldman Sachs Veteran’s Parting Shot:
“We Stopped Putting Our Clients First” Greg Smith, a 12-year veteran executive of Goldman Sachs, set Wall Street buzzing this morning with his explanation on the opinion pages of The New York Times of why he had just resigned. Smith’s chronicle of how the firm changed during his tenure underscores why Wall Street needs to […]
Who Can Investors Trust in the US?
February 8, 2012 – The Wall Street Journal Who Can Investors Trust in the US? What appears to be about to happen is that US regulators are going to abandon a 70-year-old standard (or a 750-year-old standard, depending on how you count) that made fiduciaries responsible for their trustworthy behaviour
