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
Both the number (25) and breadth (sell-side, buy-side, issuers and proprietary traders) of the associations participating in the letter to the Chair reflect very broad dissatisfaction with the SEC rulemaking process. The short time period to comment is really just one of multiple issues, and arguably not the most serious. The most problematic is the uncertainty around how the numerous different rule proposals might interact with each other. Anticipating the effect of a single major…
Senator Toomey's letter cautioned Chair Gensler that this rulemaking could be viewed as "arbitrary and capricious," which seems to be a signal to the market that - in the event the rulemaking is adopted as proposed - there would be political support for judicial action against the SEC under the Administrative Procedure Act.
It seems completely reasonable for a custodian of crypto-assets to disclose (i) the risks inherent in the business of acting as custodian, (ii) the value of the assets that it holds, and (iii) the custodian's potential liability if it fails to maintain control of the assets.
On the other hand, there seems to be no informational value in requiring the custodian to add the value of the assets it holds in custody to both sides of its balance sheet. Blowing up the custodian's balance…
Running up $42,000 in commissions in a one-year period on a $94,000 account seems akin to theft. A three-month suspension seems insufficient.