Happy New Year to all and Welcome to Thompson Hine’s newest blog offered as a service to those in the investment management and broker-dealer communities.

What a better way to begin this blog then discussing the problems that arise for RIAs and BDs at this time of year. The first and most pressing for RIAs

complianceThe exam is finally over! If your advisory firm has been undergoing an SEC examination, you’ve probably been waiting a long time to utter those words. Well, time to get back to business, right? Not so fast. As our series on SEC examinations has detailed, this is a long process. And if your firm received

signOur recent posts have walked you through the SEC’s new marketing rule and discussed valuation and fee assessment. Now, with the ADV season, hopefully, in your rear-view mirror, we turn your attention to planning for the remainder of the year. Determining the most efficient use of a compliance department’s time and resources is essential. Fortunately,

calculatorOver the last three posts to the blog (overview, performance, promoters), we’ve interrupted our previous schedule to provide insight into the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) recently adopted changes to the rules governing investment adviser marketing and advertising. In today’s post, we resume our previous topic thread focusing on the

Golden RuleThus far, our review of the necessary components of your compliance program has focused on discrete areas. This post focuses on another equally important aspect of your compliance program that touches all of those other areas; ensuring the accuracy of your disclosures. After all, what’s the point of putting in all of the hours to

ledgerOur blog recently discussed how soft dollar arrangements can impact the bottom line for both advisers and investors, and therefore require adequate disclosure. Other compliance requirements involve non-client facing operations, but are equally important to monitoring and protecting against conflicts of interest. The Personal Trading Policy is one such requirement.

The Investment Advisers Act and

IcebergIn our last post, Craig began our discussion of trading practices by examining an adviser’s duty to obtain best execution. This post continues our trading practice discussion with a focus on soft dollar arrangements.

Soft dollar arrangements generally arise when an adviser receives research or brokerage products or services from a broker-dealer in exchange