The North American Securities Administrators Association ("NASAA") released its annual list of top investor threats. NASAA urged investors to be cautious when approached with unsolicited investments such as promissory notes, oil and gas deals, and real estate investment opportunities. NASAA made the following recommendations concerning the five "most problematic products, practices or schemes": Unregistered Products/Unlicensed Salesmen: The offer of securities by an individual without a valid securities license should be considered a "red alert for investors." Promissory Notes: Average

U.S. House Representatives Peter Roskam (R-IL), Richard Neal (D-MA), Phil Roe (R-TN) and John Larson (D-CT) introduced legislation that would require the DOL to receive congressional approval before implementing a final fiduciary rule. The legislation also outlines an alternative standard to the DOL's fiduciary proposal in the combined proposals of the "Strengthening Access to Valuable Education and Retirement Support Act" (the "SAVERS Act of 2015") (H.R. 4294) and the "Affordable Retirement Advice Protection Act" (the "ARAP Act") (H.R. 4293). According to the representatives, "the proposals

The Shortened Settlement Cycle Industry Steering Committee ("ISC") outlined the timeline and activities required to move to a two-day settlement cycle ("T+2") in the U.S. It published the outline in an " Implementation Playbook" white paper. The white paper provides a suggested guideline for regulatory actions, industry actions, market participant implementation, industry testing, and migration milestones and dependencies identified by the industry, in order to meet the Q3 2017 goal for migration to a T+2 settlement. The ISC anticipates rule changes from a number of government regulators and

FINRA settled charges with a firm for (i) selling billions of unregistered microcap shares and (ii) failing to implement supervisory and/or anti-money laundering ("AML") programs that were tailored adequately to detect "red flags" for suspicious activity connected to microcap shares. FINRA also suspended and fined two of the firm's business executives. Specifically, FINRA found that the firm: did not "reasonably design" its supervisory system to satisfy its affirmative obligation to determine whether the microcap securities that it liquidated for clients were registered with the SEC or

SIFMA proposed a set of "overarching principles" that should guide future revisions and re-proposals regarding incentive-based compensation arrangements at covered financial institutions. In a comment letter, SIFMA stated that the responsibility for promulgating these revisions and re-proposals would fall on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the National Credit Union Administration, the SEC and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (collectively, the "Agencies") pursuant to Dodd-Frank Act Section 956 ("Enhanced Compensation Structure Reporting"). The