These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. Alex Oh Named SEC Director of Enforcement Washington D.C., April 22, 2021 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Alex Oh has been appointed Director of the Division of Enforcement. Oh was most recently a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and co-chair of the law firm’s Anti-Corruption & FCPA Practice Group. She was previously an Assistant U.S.…

Most investment advisers filed their form ADVs last week, before the March 31 filing deadline. That didn’t stop the Securities and Exchange Commission from publishing a new FAQ about Form ADV on April 6. Hopefully you got it right. There has been some questions about office locations that need to be disclosed on Form ADV during the pandemic. The general thought was that temporarily working from home during the pandemic didn’t need to be disclosed.…

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Examinations has published its 2021 examination priorities. The big headline is a greater focus on climate-related risks as part of information security and operational resiliency. “Building on the efforts noted above concerning our business continuity plan outreach related to the pandemic, the Division will shift its focus to whether such plans, particularly those of systemically important registrants, account for the growing physical and other relevant risks associated…

COVID vaccinations are continuing to roll out and we can hope to see an end to the pandemic. Regulators are continuing to roll out cases against people and companies that tried to illegally profit from the pandemic. The latest case is against Arrayit Corporation, a life sciences company in Sunnyvale, California. Although a public company, the Securities and Exchange Commission had put a halt to the trading in its shares on public markets in 2015…

The Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations released a new risk alert last week on COVID-19 compliance risks for broker-dealers and investment advisers. OCIE broke the concerns into six categories: protection of investors’ assets; supervision of personnel; practices relating to fees, expenses, and financial transactions; investment fraud; business continuity; and the protection of investor and other sensitive information. On first impression, that looks like a typical list of things that OCIE is concerned about…