Biography
Jim Allen, CFA, is head of Americas capital markets policy at CFA Institute. The capital markets group develops and promotes capital markets positions, policies, and standards.
This report highlights the activities of the CFA Institute Capital Markets Policy Group located in the Washington, DC, and Charlottesville, VA, offices of the America’s division.
The fact that firms are transitioning toward a registered investment advisory business model due to Reg BI cannot help but boost the standard for investment advice. Whether or not the advice of this cadre of newly minted investment advisers will be conflicted, as registered advisers they will be bound by a common law fiduciary duty that will lower the thresholds for investor claims on bad guidance. A positive step for investors.
In a nutshell, the new rule says fiduciaries cannot sacrifice returns to achieve some other objective, such as societal considerations or other nonfinancial concerns.
In recent weeks the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed regulations that in our view will undermine financial analyst independence. As an organization with long-standing leadership on analyst ethics and need for professional independence, we, CFA… READ MORE ›
The SEC's attempts to finally address the issue of broker advice were a decidedly mixed bag.
The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) has published a survey for investment adviser representatives (IARs) to collect opinions on the implementation of a continuing education program.
Although an appeals court ruling vacated the DOL's fiduciary duty rule, the debate is far from over.
Current proxy rules work against shareowners who are trying to vote in alternative and independent board members, but it is shortsighted of firms to ignore owners’ interests.
Broad-based proposed legislation could bring wide-sweeping reforms to financial market regulation and undo Dodd–Frank and the DOL Fiduciary Rule.
Merrill Lynch disregards existing regulations and puts its customers at risk in the pursuit of short-term gains. SEC fines them $425 million.
Will lawsuits delay implementation of DOL’s fiduciary rule to address conflicts of interest in retirement advice? Why is rule still so politically charged? What hard choices face investors, lawmakers?
The report on the DOL’s fiduciary rule predicts three market trends will emerge. The rise of robo-advisers is one of them. What are the other two, and who will be the winners and losers of the rule?
The group is worried about investment fund costs, said CFA Institute managing director Kurt Schacht, CFA. Our study shows even a 1% annual fee can consume over 30% of investors’ returns over 40 years.
The US Labor Department has released its final fiduciary rules for retirement advice. While the rules steadfastly maintain their requirement for a best-interests contract for most arrangements between investors and nonfiduciary advisers, the federal agency relented on a number of troublesome implementation matters.
Dennis Dick, CFA: “Circuit breakers and warning systems for stop or market orders are mere band-aids for potentially larger underlying market structural issues ...."