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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

When Mr. Gensler was the Chair of the CFTC, he also initially took an expansive approach to assertions of CFTC jurisdiction over non-U.S. entities having contact with the United States. Forcing U.S. regulatory dominance over European firms was thwarted in significant part by EU Commissioner Michel Barnier who made clear that he would respond by making it difficult for U.S. firms to do business in the European Union if Chair Gensler attempted to regulate European firms. See, e.g., .

There is one, and only one, very good reason that many more banks are not in distress as a result of the withdrawal of deposits. It is because it is understood that the federal government is guaranteeing all depositors, insured and uninsured. Were it not for that reality, depositors would be much more flighty.  

Judging in hindsight, it is disappointing that the banking regulators did not anticipate the fallout from rapidly rising inflation. Given that banks are in the business…

More regulation does not solve all problems. Recent banking failures do not result from any shortage of rules. They result from high inflation, bad management, and failed supervision, with high inflation being the precipitating cause.  

There is no reason to believe that more regulation of central clearing would make markets safer. Based on the reports on the failure of Lehman Brothers, the Trustee blamed DTC and the other central clearing agencies for worsening the crisis…

It would be a shame if the debate over the SEC's custody proposal became focused on the problems that it would create for the custody of digital assets. The problems with the proposal are far broader. Consider, for example, what happens when banks, including foreign banks, simply refuse to sign the types of agreements that the SEC would demand that U.S. advisers obtain? Are advisers going to be required to liquidate customer's assets?  There are going to be a lot of unhappy investors.…