In Aegis Frumento's last few [In]Securities blogs, he had been hard on his friends at the SEC; so, this week, Aegis opts to give them a lift. Aegis notes recent SEC Staff efforts to pursue so-called "broken windows" securities policing. As Aegis sees it, that's a good thing even if it does little to solve any of the underlying issues of the markets. Going along with that somewhat ironic outlook, Aegis muses that there's something comforting in the recurring proof that crookedness is highly correlated with stupidity and hubris.
In today's blog we come upon a convoluted dispute involving an underwriter, two companies, two deals, two agreements, one IPO goes forward, one IPO gets withdrawn, then the IPO'd company acquires the other non-IPO'd company, and . . . omigod, what a mess! Was a success fee earned for one or two or three deals? Did FINRA have to approve all three purported transactions or only two or one?
In today's Guest Blog, anonymous author "Regulated or Aggrieved" notes the discrepancy between the data privacy required under the Federal Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA") and the relative lack of privacy of the Central Registration Depository ("CRD") data of hundreds of thousands of industry associated persons. The author wonders why CRD and FINRA accumulate and preserve their data in a manner that does not seem to conform to the letter of the FCRA law (or its spirit). Further, the author points to Regulation S-P, which protects brokerage customers' data, and asks why such a framework doesn't apply to the industry's employees.