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USA TODAY
For one shining moment in January, it looked as if the stock trading app and retail brokerage Robinhood had lived up to its namesake – the rabble-rousing outlaw of English folklore.
In the hands of a merry band of Reddit traders, Robinhood helped to bring a group of short-selling hedge funds to their knees and many people cheered – delighted to see wealth stripped from a few members of the billionaire class after decades in which wealth has been increasingly consolidated in the hands of the very few. Our customers have shown the world that investing is for everyone, Robinhood said on its website, not just institutional investors and hedge funds.
Monday, February 8, 2021
The dust has settled on the 2020 election, and the Biden administration has begun pressing forward with its policy objectives. Critical to achieving such objectives is the Democrats’ control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, albeit by the narrowest of margins after the Democratic senatorial candidates won their run-off elections in Georgia. As a result of the Georgia elections, Vice President Harris will be able to cast the tie-breaking vote in the case of a deadlock in the Senate. What does the change in administrations mean for SEC enforcement?
SEC Leadership
As part of the transition, Chairman Jay Clayton has already left the Commission, and President Biden has nominated Gary Gensler to replace him. Mr. Gensler, who served as chairman of the Commodity Future Trading Commission (“CFTC”) under the Obama Administration, was widely perceived as an aggressive CFTC chairman during the financial crisis. At that time, this agg
SEC Enforcement and Exams Likely to Focus More on Private Funds in the New Administration
For the next several weeks and months, intense focus will be trained on determining the priorities of the Biden administration. We believe that at the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), the new administration will ramp up examinations and investigations of investment advisers, and specifically advisers to private funds.
The industry has certainly been in growth mode. By the SEC’s own calculations, the number of private funds increased by nearly one third during the past four years (from 26,840 funds in the first quarter of 2016 to 34,858 in the first quarter of 2020), and the aggregate net asset value increased likewise (from $6.9 trillion in the first quarter of 2016 to $9.5 trillion in the first quarter of 2020).