FINRA issued an Investor Alert titled "Marijuana Stock Scams" to help investors spot and avoid deceptive marijuana-related investments. The alert warned investors about potential frauds involving "pump and dump" scams, in which con artists try to entice investors with optimistic and potentially misleading information to create demand for shares of small, thinly traded companies that have little or no history of financial success. See: "Marijuana Stock Scam"; FINRA Press Release.

The SEC charged a former portfolio manager at Oppenheimer & Co. with misleading investors about the valuation and performance of a fund consisting of other private equity funds. The SEC found that the portfolio manager disseminated quarterly reports and marketing materials to prospective investors, which misstated that the valuation of the Oppenheimer fund's holdings was based on values received from the portfolio managers of those underlying funds. As a result, the fund's reported performance, as measured by its internal rate of return, a key indicator of the fund's performance, was

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System issued a paper evaluating the capital planning process at large bank holding companies. The agency found that while the process has improved, more work needs to be done to enhance practices for assessing the capital necessary to withstand stressful economic and financial conditions. The paper noted various aspects that need the most improvement, including: accounting risks for specific business activities, methods of projecting the effect of certain stresses on capital needs, and governance of the capital-planning process. See: Capital

The IRS activated its FATCA Registration Portal on August 19 to permit foreign financial institutions ("FFIs") to start registering under FATCA and to agree to the terms of an FFI Agreement with the IRS. The FATCA Registration Portal can be accessed at www.irs.gov/fatca. As indicated in Notice 2013-43, FFIs can now set up an account through the Portal and add or modify registration information. Information entered into the system prior to January 1, 2014, even if submitted as final, will not be regarded as a final submission but will merely be stored on the website. On or after January 1, 2014

The staffs of the SEC, FINRA, and CFTC's issued a joint advisory on business continuity and disaster recovery planning. The three regulators published their joint observations on how to best to improve response time and reduce recovery time after significant large-scale events. Additionally, the NFA required that its members fill out a questionnaire to help better tailor and customize recovery plans. See: Joint Continuity Planning; NFA Questionnaire. See also: SEC Press Release; CFTC Press Release; FINRA Press Release.