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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

Given that the Biden Administration has been hostile to digital assets, it is a virtual certainty that Secretary Yellen and the Treasury Department will assert that there are material problems with the Discussion Draft, which was been sponsored by members of the Republican Party. SEC Chair Gensler will likely conclude that existing laws are adequate to the regulation of digital assets and that the Discussion Draft is not needed.

The most significant bill on the list might be the Bank Safety Act, which would seemingly require banks to recognize non-trading losses in their capital computations. This would provide a much clearer signal to the market when a bank is in trouble, which seems only fair if shareholders will be expected to bear the losses from bank failures.

While it may seem, on a surface level, that easing proxy requirements facilitates "democracy," a good number of proxies on political issues are advanced by holders whose goals are adverse to the interests of the company, its shareholders, employees and customers. In many cases, they may hope to obtain a compromise by threatening a public fight that damages the company's reputation. When these activists achieve their desired political goal, they then sell their stock and move on, as the goal…

The recommendation that advisers be required to hire third party examiners needs far more consideration. To whom would these examiners be responsible: the government or the adviser? Who would reward these examiners for finding problems? What is the relationship between the examiners and the adviser's CCO?