AML and Financial Crimes

ESMA has published a final report assessing the functioning of the Transaction Reporting regime under Article 26 of the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (“MiFIR”). Among a number of proposed changes perhaps the most impactful is the recommendation that UCITS management companies and AIFMs that are providing one or more MiFID services (i.e., Collective Portfolio Management or ‘CPMI’ firms) should be subject to transaction reporting

Here we summarize the regulatory filing submission deadlines occurring from April through June 2021.

On February 26, 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Division of Examinations released a Risk Alert highlighting areas of concern found in its examinations of investment advisers and broker-dealers investing and dealing in digital assets that are securities. We believe that these recent Division observations highlight the SEC’s interest in Digital Asset Securities and are a precursor to additional scrutiny in these areas.

Apple has issued urgent updates for its iPhone, iPad, and iWatch devices. According to Apple, these updates patch a discovered “cross site scripting” vulnerability that allows bad actors to inject malicious code into web pages. The code could be enabled when users access these pages using browsers on Apple devices. This vulnerability may already have been exploited.

The SEC issued an FAQ officially confirming what has been informally communicated by Division of Investment Management staff, which is that investment advisers may not implement the new Marketing Rule until they are prepared to comply with it in its entirety. Note that this includes both the rules around traditional advertisements and the new requirements for solicitation arrangements.

The long-awaited modernization of the Marketing Rule was added to the Federal Register on March 5, 2021. Not only does the final marketing rule consolidate the advertising and cash solicitation rules, it also (among other things) categorizes certain considerations for presenting investment performance, effectively streamlining guidance currently found across multiple staff letters.