The SEC voted to publish a concept release requesting public comment on current audit committee disclosure requirements. According to the concept release, the SEC is interested in receiving comments on information about the relationship between audit committees and auditors, and whether improvements can be made to enhance the information provided to investors regarding an audit committee's responsibilities and activities. Specifically, the SEC is inviting comments on whether its disclosure requirements should be refined to provide more insight into the information used by an audit committee

By a vote of three to two, the SEC approved a proposal to adopt listing standards for the mandatory repayment by executive officers of erroneously awarded compensation. The proposal would direct national securities exchanges and associations to establish the standards, and companies to adopt policies that obliged their executive officers to repay inapposite compensation that was intended to be incentive-based. It is the final proposal involving executive compensation rules to be required by Dodd-Frank. The proposal creates Rule 10D-1 requiring listed companies to develop and enforce recovery

The SEC charged an investment advisory firm and its two owners with fraudulently inflating the prices of securities in hedge fund portfolios they managed. An SEC investigation found that an adviser from AlphaBridge Capital Management ("AlphaBridge") told investors and the company's auditor that it obtained independent price quotes from broker-dealers for certain unlisted, thinly traded residential mortgage-backed securities. Instead, the SEC found, AlphaBridge gave internally derived valuations to broker-dealer representatives to pass off as their own. The inflated valuation of these assets

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ("FRB") released its first determination of the aggregate consolidated liabilities of all financial companies in accordance with Dodd-Frank Act Section 622 ("Concentration Limits on Large Financial Firms"). The determination "prohibits any financial company from combining with another company if the resulting company's liabilities exceed 10 percent of the aggregate consolidated liabilities of all financial companies." The limit applies to the following financial companies: insured depository institutions, bank holding companies, savings and

The SEC charged Deloitte Touche LLP ("Deloitte") with violating auditor independence rules. According to the SEC, Deloitte violated rules that concern the appearance of independence by not following its own procedures for conducting an independence consultation before entering into a new business relationship with a trustee, and by not realizing that it had failed to do so until nearly five years later. The SEC also found that in audit reports, Deloitte represented that it was independent of the three funds even as its trustee served on their boards and audit committees simultaneously. See