In light of the unprecedented shift to a “working-from-home-economy” due to the pandemic, employees need to be extremely careful with work-related information that can accidentally be shared with their household. Confidential or even material non-public information can involuntarily be shared
SEC
COVID-19 Scams on the Rise and Enforcement on the Horizon
As COVID-19 continues to impact capital markets around the world, securities regulators in North America are responding to an increasing number of securities-related scams. Provincial securities regulators across Canada, as well as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, have…
Alberta Securities Commission signs Enhanced Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen cross-border enforcement cooperation
In July 2019, the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) joined other signatories, including the Ontario Securities Commission and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), by signing the International Organization of Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO)…
US Tenth Circuit holds SEC can apply antifraud provisions extraterritorially in certain situations
One trend running through recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions is a sense of caution in expanding the scope of U.S. law to extraterritorial activities. To that end, the Court has instructed that a statute does not apply extraterritorially unless the…
Be Careful What You Say – SEC successfully concludes enforcement proceedings against robo-advisors for false advertising and misleading disclosures
On December 21, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled proceedings against two robo-advisors for making false statements about investment products and publishing misleading advertising. The proceedings were the SEC’s first enforcement actions against robo-advisors, providing guidance…
The Hard Way – SEC announces first penalties and compliance roadmap for unregistered ICOs
On November 16, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced consent orders settling actions in respect of two unregistered initial coin offerings (ICOs), including the first fines levied against non-compliant ICO issuers made by the…
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Long Reach
You are a third-party witness to a potential breach of U.S. securities laws, living in Québec, if you think that you are out of reach of the SEC, think again. In United States Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ouellet,…
SEC to Resume Administrative Law Proceedings Following Supreme Court Ruling
In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 21, 2018 decision in Lucia v. SEC, No. 17-130, holding that administrative law judges (ALJs) at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had been improperly appointed because they had been…
The Importance of Cooperation Among Interjurisdictional Securities Regulators: United States Securities and Exchange Commission v. Autorité des marchés financiers, 2018 QCCQ 4417
In the recent decision of United States Securities and Exchange Commission v. Autorité des marchés financiers, 2018 QCCQ 4417, the Quebec Court, Criminal and Penal Chamber held that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)…
Copy and Paste Securities Fraud? The U.S. Supreme Court to Decide
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear a case where an investment banker copied and pasted misstatements from his boss into emails that, at his boss’s request, he sent to prospective debenture purchasers. In Lorenzo v. Securities …