Insights

Compliance Newsflash for May 6, 2020 – FINRA Warns of Fraudulent Phishing Emails Purporting to be from FINRA

FINRA warns member firms of a widespread, ongoing phishing campaign that involves fraudulent emails purporting to be from FINRA officers, including Bill Wollman and Josh Drobnyk. These emails have a source domain name "@broker-finra.org" and request immediate attention to an attachment relating to your firm. In at least in some cases, the emails do not actually include the attachment, in which case they may be attempting to gain the recipient's trust so that a follow-up email can be sent with an infected attachment or link, or a request for confidential firm information. In other cases, what appears to be an attached PDF file may direct the user to a website which prompts the user to enter their Microsoft Office or SharePoint password. FINRA recommends that anyone who entered their password change it immediately and notify the appropriate individuals in their firm of the incident.

Benchmarking: Why Normalizing Adjustments are Essential

Benchmarking: Why normalizing adjustments are essential Financial statements aren’t particularly meaningful without a relevant basis of comparison. There are two types of “benchmarks” that a company’s financials can be compared to — its own historical performance and the performance of other comparable businesses. Before you conduct a benchmarking study, however, it’s important to make normalizing adjustments to avoid any misleading comparisons. This is especially important when looking at periods that include atypical financial results due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. But there are a variety of factors that require normalizing adjustments.

Compliance Newsflash for April 29, 2020 – COVID-19: Practice Note: Compliance Checklist For Private Fund Managers During A Pandemic

The global COVID-19 pandemic has affected virtually all businesses. Some have scaled back operations or close completely, while others have enacted business continuity plans (BCPs) and have ordered employees to work from home. Private fund managers have faced many of the same operational challenges, in addition to having to contend with horrific market conditions marked by a lack of liquidity, extreme volatility, and a bear market in almost every asset class.