Skip to main content

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

Potential legal challengers to the recent spate of SEC rulemaking have to be pleased by the fact that their doubts as to the SEC's justification for its rulemakings and the legality of the SEC's process are shared by two of the SEC Commissioners.   

This is the second time in a week that MFA questioned the SEC's authority to adopt a rule. (See previous coverage .) There are a number of other SEC proposals that could very well attract similar legal challenge.  

What makes these potential legal challenges even more interesting is that many of the proposals do not have unanimous support even within the SEC. They were put forward along party-lines with dissents by commissioners who warned that the rule changes were ill…

It is understandable that the FRB assigns some blame for the various bank failures on the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act which they said, “impeded effective supervision [of SVB] by reducing standards, increasing complexity, and promoting a less assertive supervisory approach." It is not as obvious how well this blame is placed.

The reasons why the various banks failed appears to be straightforward: massive exposure to interest rate risk combined…

Before moving ahead with further protections for retail investors, the SEC should go back and do a study of the impact of Regulation Best Interest. Has it resulted in retail investors receiving better advice from broker-dealers or has it forced them to social media? (See, .)  

The SEC's new rule proposal that effectively discourages the use of predictive analytics in serving retail investors will make it still more difficult, if adopted, for retail investors to obtain…