Chief Legal Architect and a co-founder of Caffrey.AI
Steven Lofchie is the Chief Legal Architect and a co-founder of Caffrey.AI, an AI platform built for law firms, banks, and the financial regulatory industry. He is also a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, where he advises financial institutions on securities laws, the Commodity Exchange Act, and broker-dealer regulation. Ranked by Chambers USA every year since 2007, he is the author of “Lofchie’s Guide to Broker-Dealer Regulation,” long considered the leading treatise on the subject.
Recent Articles & Comments
It has been, for quite a while, a seemingly irrational eccentricity of the Investment Company Act that registered investment companies could custody with a futures commission merchant but not with a broker-dealer, particularly as most entities registered as FCMs are also registered as broker-dealers.
Ms. Peirce was, in my view, truly a great Commissioner: focused on the SEC's mission, respectful of the limits of its regulatory authority, funny, honest, and thoughtful. It is a shame that she had to spend so much of her tenure as a minority foil to a majority that was not equally mindful of the SEC's purposes or the legal limits of its authority.
The cited statutory provision, 12 U.S.C. 4516, does require the Director of the FHFA to establish and collect fees to provide for the reasonable costs and expenses of the agency. The statute says nothing about the OIG in particular, and the notion that a particular subordinate official within the FHFA has statutory authority to set that subordinate official's budget is incorrect.
Whatever one's view may be on the desired level of funding for the FHFA in general, or for an…
As a matter of economic policy, this may be absolutely senseless. But one can see how it could work as a political play.