Regulation

AXA Rosenberg said it agreed to pay $217 million to cover investor losses as well as a $25 million civil penalty, in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding a coding error with its risk model.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association spells out the unintended consequences of the proposed regulation.

The California asset manager said it agreed to pay $217 million to cover investor losses as well as a $25 million civil penalty, in a settlement with the SEC over a coding error in its risk model. The firm's chairman, Barr Rosenberg, resigned, after a probe into errors in the firm's data systems.

“Something has gone very wrong in Washington,” said Tom Giachetti of Stark & Stark Attorneys at Law. “You cannot catch criminals through more regulation. Investment advisors will be burdened with more costs and it’s not protecting the investing public. This is a knee jerk reaction to Bernie Madoff.”

The $10 million is part of a settlement announced Thursday with the SEC, which charged the company with "failing to reasonably supervise its registered representatives" when the Reserve Yield Plus Fund saw the value of its shares fall below $1 in the midst of the credit crisis erupting at the time.

International regulators worked hard, agreed in December to impose tough standards and then gave bankers eight years to meet them. But the reality is something much less concrete.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission both say they lack the resources to implement the responsibilities thrust upon them by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. Here are the numbers. You judge how they stack up.

Firms have been tracking the adjusted cost basis of the equities and mutual funds bought and sold by investors for years. The challenge now is how best to capture this data and accurately report it to the IRS and investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday said it would start the process of setting rules for how security-based swap execution facilities will operate and how registration of such facilities will work.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out: Without a new tax on the securities industry, there won’t be reform of same.