This week on Mutual Fund Minute, Jay Baris continues his conversation about the growing interest in artificial intelligence for investment managers with Sidley’s Hardy Callcott and Nathan Greene. Hardy is a San Francisco-based partner in Sidley’s Securities Enforcement and Regulatory practice who focuses on securities and regulatory issues for broker-dealers, investment advisers, and mutual funds. Nathan, based in New York, heads Sidley’s Registered Funds practice.

This week on Mutual Fund Minute, Jay Baris talks about the growing interest in artificial intelligence with Sidley’s Hardy Callcott and Nathan Greene. Hardy is a San Francisco-based partner in Sidley’s Securities Enforcement and Regulatory practice who focuses on securities and regulatory issues for broker-dealers, investment advisers, and mutual funds. Nathan, based in New York, heads Sidley’s Registered Funds practice.

In this episode of the Mutual Fund Minute, Sidley partner Jay Baris and Eric Pan, President and CEO of the Investment Company Institute, celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first American mutual fund. Eric shares his views on topics, including the SEC’s regulatory agenda, the role of AI in asset management, and ideas to modernize the Investment Company Act of 1940. Part 2 of 2 episodes.

In this episode of the Mutual Fund Minute, Sidley partner Jay Baris and Eric Pan, President and CEO of the Investment Company Institute, celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first American mutual fund. Eric shares his views on the challenges that funds, independent directors, and investors face in the current regulatory environment. Part 1 of 2 episodes. 

In this episode of Mutual Fund Minute, host and Sidley partner, Jay Baris, and Leonard Ng, head of Sidley's UK/EU Financial Services Regulatory group, discuss fund regulation in the United Kingdom and the European Union in a post-Brexit world.

SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce sat down with Sidley partner Jay Baris to share her views on a wide range of topics concerning mutual funds and investment management. In this episode of the Mutual Fund Minute, Commissioner Peirce discusses the SEC’s proposed safeguarding rule, the Supreme Court’s Howey test, CCO liability and the future of crypto regulation, regulation of non-bank financial institutions, and the future of SEC regulation, among other issues. You can listen to the first part here: A Chat With Commissioner Peirce, Part I. 

SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce met with Sidley partner Jay Baris in Washington, D.C. to share her views on a wide range of topics concerning mutual funds and investment management. In this episode of the Mutual Fund Minute, Commissioner Peirce discusses the SEC’s approval of 11 exchange-traded products that will trade in bitcoin, the SEC’s regulatory agenda, proposed rules regulating predictive data analytics, and the overall fast pace of rulemaking.

Are you now a securities dealer? The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) blurred the distinction between who is an investor or mere trader and who is a “dealer” for purposes of the Federal Securities Laws when it adopted final rules on February 6, 2024, defining activities that require someone to register as a “dealer” or a “government securities dealer.” By a 3-to-2 vote, the SEC approved rules that would require anyone that engages in a “regular pattern of buying and selling securities” that has the effect of providing liquidity to other market participants to register as a dealer under the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. These new rules likely will require certain private funds, and other institutional investors, to register as dealers and comply with all the regulation that follows.

In this episode of the Mutual Fund Minute, Sidley partners Jay Baris and Charles Sommers discuss what these new rules will mean and why they are significant. 

A divided U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cautiously heralded a new crypto era, on January 10, 2024, when it approved by a 3 to 2 vote multiple exchange-traded products that invest directly in bitcoin for listing and trading. To get to this point, the Commission followed a long and rocky road. While the Commission’s approval was a cause for celebration in crypto world, and, of course, with bitcoin funds in waiting, it also left many people wondering why this took so long, while others said that the SEC’s approval could sacrifice investor protection.

 In this episode of the Mutual Fund Minute, host and Sidley partner Jay Baris discusses the process that led up to this milestone and what it means for investors.

On Halloween 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor spooked the investment adviser world when it proposed rules that would redefine who is a fiduciary when someone provides investment advice for purposes of the Employee Retirement Income Securities Act of 1974 (ERISA).  If adopted as proposed, these rules would greatly expand the categories of investment advice that would be subject to ERISA’s fiduciary standards.

In this episode of the Mutual Fund Minute, host and Sidley partner Jay Baris, and Beth Dickstein, a Chicago-based partner in Sidley’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice, look at how these new rules would affect investment advisers and investors.