Partner
Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP
Steven Lofchie is a Partner based in New York. He advises financial institutions and corporate clients on the securities laws and the Commodity Exchange Act, with particular focus on the regulation of broker-dealers, swap dealers, investment funds and other market intermediaries. Steven's transactional practice focuses on securities credit and derivative transactions.
Recent Articles & Comments
While the PCAOB's report is directly relevant to auditors, broker-dealers should also review the report to anticipate any potential new areas of attention. The report was notable for indicating that auditors should not confine their review to matters of a financial nature, but should also be alert to "customer complaints," any "questionable ethical behavior" and "fraud."
Given the prevalence of bad actors that want to create harm, and the varying reasons that motivate them, the SEC should really consider whether forcing firms to centralize activities and information in a single technology (i.e., CAT for trading information and cleared repo through FICC) is prudent, even assuming it brings some benefits.
There are two risks to banks and other custodians on the one hand, and their customers, on the other, in connection with the custodians' holding of crypto-assets.
First, should the custodian become insolvent, the customer would be treated as having loaned the crypto-assets to the custodian (no different than if the customer had actually loaned money to the custodian), in which case the customer would be treated as a general unsecured creditor in the custodian's bankruptcy.…
A few questions for the CFPB to consider:
Assuming that an NSF fee of over $30 is too high for an automatically declined transaction, is "no fee" too low? If "no fee" is too low, does the fee prohibition discourage banks from taking on lower income consumers? Are there any costs inherent to the rejection of the transaction that it would be reasonable for the bank to pass to the consumer?