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
To boil down this report to a single sentence: In a competitive battle between big tech and big finance, big tech is going to be the winner.
According to the report, big tech's superior access to data, superior usage of that data, greater size, larger customer base, and more diverse range of product offerings makes it the overwhelming long-term favorite in a competitive battle with traditional financial service firms. The report finds this both potentially good (lower costs to…
Fannie and Freddie are already subject to comprehensive regulation by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. If Congress is not satisfied with the current state of regulation, it should amend the relevant statutes rather than have regulators make the decision through an and non-transparent set of procedures.
The notion that morality (or ESG) can be scored on an objective scale is problematic. Not only do we do not share a common view of what is moral, but the intensity of ongoing political differences makes obvious the divergence in our views of what is moral; thus any "ESG" scale is inherently subjective (or, even worse, to use Commissioner Peirce's term, a measure of what is "trendy"). See .
It is not clear what incentive market participants would have to provide liquidity that will help to stabilize markets. Historically, market makers were compensated (arguably overcompensated) for serving in that role; thus the threat of losing the right to serve in that role could serve as an incentive to provide liquidity to a declining market. Regulations have generally removed the benefits of serving in a market maker role, so it is not obvious why any firm would or should put itself at…