Compliance

President Obama will likely win a second presidential term in November, but the election's outcome for policy and investing will likely not be as decisive, according to a research report released Wednesday by UBS Wealth Management Americas.

As efforts to apply stricter fiduciary and disclosure requirements on broker-dealers slow, the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard, a one-year-old think tank that advocates for uniformity, met with Mary Schapiro, the Chairman of the SEC, to make its case.

With an eye on extending a fiduciary standard to all, the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard sent this declaration.

ProShares this week got some good news from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which dismissed, in its entirety, the class action lawsuit filed against the firm in 2009.

The Financial Services Authority has fined BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited £9,533,100 (US$15.2 million) for failing to adequately protect its clients’ money market deposits and for failing to have controls in place to protect its money market deposits.

Even with Wall Street and consumer advocates allied in pushing for it, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposal to raise standards for brokers advising retail investors has run aground.

Multi-manager shop Virtus Investment Partners has added Rampart Investment Management, which specializes in customized options strategies for institutional and high-net-worth clients, as a wholly owned affiliate of Virtus.

There's no rest or relaxation for operations managers, as fund firms adjust to life in an era of worldwide financial reform.

Risk management and regulatory reporting.

Loomis Sayles is making a hasty name change to one of its funds after losing out on a federal lawsuit.

The SEC has obtained a $1.1 million settlement from Portland, Ore., based planner Christopher Keil Hicks and two of his companies on charges they failed to disclose a revenue-sharing agreement and other conflicts with his clients.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has settled an administrative proceeding against two Portland, Oregon-based investment advisory firms regarding their failure to disclose a revenue-sharing agreement and other potential conflicts of interest to clients.

The SEC filed a cease-and-desist order against noted investment advisor and radio personality Ray Lucia, alleging a series of misleading statements in retirement-strategy seminars plugging Lucia's "buckets of money" strategy.

Stephen Luparello, vice chairman at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is leaving after more than 16 years to take a job at a Washington law firm, the brokerage industry's self-regulator said in a statement.

Despite improved efficiencies and reduced costs, the increased complexity of service provider arrangements has made it more difficult for plan sponsors and ERISA fiduciaries to understand how and how much compensation should be paid to service providers.

After more than a year of battling it out in Washington, D.C., and around the country, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro called off her proposed second round of reform for money market mutual funds.

The Internal Revenue Service's list of the most common errors it sees from taxpayers and paid preparers on tax returns is a sobering reminder that nobody is perfect. Here's what the IRS had to do to fix the most prevalent mistakes.

Who would've thunk it?

Many Wall Street experts think that the JOBS Act will fundamentally change the hedge fund industry. But will it lead to the consolidation of existing funds and the creation of others?

Programs to strengthen bank liquidity, facilitate credit and buy mortgages were good moves, though it is hard to say how much worse things would have been in their absence, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke said at the Jackson Hole summit.