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
The notion that, on a widespread basis, speculation drives prices up and beyond the reasonable expectations of market participants has always seemed questionable from the standpoint of economic theory. If, because of the behavior of some speculators, prices were to rise to unreasonably high levels, then why wouldn't other speculators seek to sell into those unreasonably high prices, make a sure profit, and drive prices down? Leaving aside the generalities in that assertion, it is hard to…
The OCIE indicates that one of its areas of priority is determining whether investors' assets are being put into accounts that are charged on the basis of assets under management rather than trading volume. It should be clear that the effect of the regulators' drive to impose a "fiduciary" obligation on broker-dealers providing recommendations will be to motivate broker-dealers to move clients into accounts charging asset-backed fees. After all, an account that pays only…
The extension is essentially a formality, since there are no SEC rules in place to regulate security-based swap dealers.
This proposal (contained in MSRB Reg. Notice 16-02) and the proposal to shorten the securities settlement cycle (contained in MSRB Reg. Notice 15-22), along with related requirements for margin to be posted on To-Be-Announced securities, reflect regulators' ongoing drive to decrease settlement risk in the securities markets.