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
Commissioner Peirce's arrival at the SEC is genuinely exciting to those who care about financial regulation, both in its implementation and philosophy. She is not just staking out positive positions, which is obviously a nice-to-have; she is establishing the intellectual underpinning of those positions, which is an essential-to-have if the positions are to be enduring and establishing a framework for approaching issues on an ongoing basis. By conceding that there are limits to the knowledge…
The two margin actions are significant. Eliminating the requirement to collect initial margin on TBA transactions will vastly simplify the implementation of the rule. Although this requirement seemed "common sense," it would have created tremendous operational problems, the difficulties and expense of which overwhelmed the benefits, which were not that great in light of the limited risks of the product.
Likewise, it is all to the good that FINRA is seeking comment on the…
Like some Cabinet newsletters, nice title, not much substance.
Improving the nuts and bolts of operations has the potential to significantly reduce systemic risk. In this regard, reducing trade date settlement from three days to two was probably as significant as anything done by Dodd-Frank (and a good bit more straightforward). Increasing the speed of cash settlement (and further reducing the speed of securities settlement) would be further significant measures to reduce systemic risk.