Held on December 5th, this was a very well-attended conference of industry participants and regulators. The key note speaker, Kevin Mahn, Chief Investment Officer for Hennion and Walsh Asset Management, presented the potential impacts on investment management returns of recent global political invents (e.g., US Presidential Election, Italian Referendum rejection,<span. . .

Beginning in 2009, the Department of Labor undertook a multi-year regulatory project to address the problems with conflicts of interest in investment advice, balancing the need to better protect retirement savings while minimizing disruptions to the many good practices and good advice that the industry provides.

In response to the increasingly automated nature of securities markets and trading activity being widely dispersed across many trading centers, the SEC in 2010 proposed a rule that would require the stock exchanges and national securities associations (SROs) to develop a consolidated audit trail (CAT).

The industry supports a move to shorten the settlement cycle for U.S. equities, corporate bonds, and municipal bonds to trade date plus two days (T+2) from the current T+3 in the third quarter of 2017.