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
Although the G20 Communiqué has no actual legal effect, the intellectual bent is clear: it supports globalism and government intervention while remaining either indifferent or hostile to private enterprise. The Communiqué begins with a recognition that the global economy is weak. It then pivots toward questions of infrastructure spending which inherently means either government spending or spending through international government agencies and "multilateral development banks." The G20…
CEA Section 2(h) should be amended to specify that any determination that a swap is subject to mandatory exchange trading must be initiated by regulators, in light of market conditions, and not by exchanges. Unbundling the mandatory exchange-trading element of the CEA from the mandatory clearing element would give the CFTC more latitude to make its clearing determination without being forced to approve the mandatory exchange trading of the swap.
It is unclear why anyone would want to register as a funding portal, since there are no obvious economic advantages to that aspect of the crowdfunding business. Perhaps there is some non-economic benefit driving registrations. Undoubtedly, raising $4.4 million in funds is a nice development for the 60 businesses that have done so, but it is a non-event as far as the economy is concerned. Perhaps that sum will become more meaningful in the business pages of newspapers at some point, but right…
The FSOC has shown a continuing interest in risks that relate to mutual funds and investment advisers, two areas that are not under the control of the banking regulators who dominate the FSOC. Meanwhile, the FSOC largely has ignored risks that seem far greater than, for example, the risks associated with government pension plans. Would it not be more prudent for the FSOC to address the unrealistically high levels of projected returns that these plans promise, along with the…