Summit Notebook

So how plugged in is the SEC chair? (technologically speaking)

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro says her agency has its work cut out to compete with the massive amounts of money that private firms, policed by the SEC, pour into the latest technology.

“Can we keep up with Wall Street? I think we have a fighting chance. We’ll never have, under any circumstances, the kind of budgets that would allow us to spend a billion dollars a year on technology as some firms do, I mean that’s just not going to happen, and I totally understand that,” she said at the Reuters Future Face of Finance Summit.

“If we can build a forensics lab for our enforcement people to be able to download data off of iPhones and iPads and other instruments, then we will be a lot better able to pursue insider trading potentially and other securities law violations,” she said.

So how technologically plugged in is the SEC chair personally?

“I have an iPad,” Schapiro said.

“No I don’t do Twitter, I don’t have a Facebook page. You know, in my position it would be complicated,” she said with a laugh. “So maybe I’m kind of middling in terms of technology.”

Her agency has a Twitter feed and a Facebook page in development.

Against high Hill drama, SEC chief mum on Goldman

First of all, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro would not talk about Goldman Sachs.

There was no drawing her out. The head of the agency that filed a civil fraud lawsuit charging that Goldman misled investors would not say a word about the case.

Quite the opposite from the high-drama being played out at the same time on Capitol Hill where Goldman Sachs executives were facing the fusillade at a Senate hearing, where one senator kept repeating “shi–y deal.” (There are two t’s missing from that word).

Schapiro in an interview at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit just was not going to go there. “I’m not going to comment on Goldman,” she said before one reporter even got the question out.

Even while responding to a tangential question, she began by saying “put the Goldman case aside,” careful to make sure her answer would not be linked to the investment bank.

Asked whether this could be seen as the start of the SEC’s war on Wall Street, Schapiro replied: “Well first of all, I’m not going to comment on Goldman.  There is no war on anybody.”

She went on to say: “I guess what I would like to see is people take a big step backward and think about who are we here to serve, and how do we best serve them?”

Reuters set to spotlight financial regulation in DC

The fight over new rules that will dramatically change Wall Street and financial markets is approaching the finish line in Washington, with both lawmakers and the financial industry making last-ditch efforts to put their stamp on the reform effort. Reuters will be hearing from the key players in the debate on April 26-29 during the 2010 Global Financial Regulation Summit.

Top regulators, watchdogs, lawmakers and stakeholders will provide their perspectives on how this landmark legislation will impact banks, investors, traders and consumers. The talks will focus in on proposals for a strong new consumer agency, strict oversight of derivatives and attempts to end the perception that some financial firms are “too big to fail.”

Reuters set to spotlight financial regulation in DC

The fight over new rules that will dramatically change Wall Street and financial markets is approaching the finish line in Washington, with both lawmakers and the financial industry making last-ditch efforts to put their stamp on the reform effort. Reuters will be hearing from the key players in the debate on April 26-29 during the 2010 Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit.

Top regulators, watchdogs, lawmakers and stakeholders will provide their perspectives on how this landmark legislation will impact banks, investors, traders and consumers. The talks will focus in on proposals for a strong new consumer agency, strict oversight of derivatives and attempts to end the perception that some financial firms are “too big to fail.”

SEC’s Schapiro says journalist job cuts worrying

Mary Schapiro, America’s new top cop for the securities industry, said the current mass culling of journalists’ jobs is a concern because it could reduce the number of leads that regulators get as they seek to crack down on nefarious behavior.

“It’s an absolute worry for me because I think financial journalists have in many cases been the sources of some really important enforcement cases and really important discovery of practices and products that regulators should be profoundly concerned about,” the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission told the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit in Washington on Tuesday.

“But for journalists having been dogged and determined and really pursuing some of these things, they might not be known to the regulators or they might not be known for a long time,” she said.

But Schapiro, who was speaking a day after Conde Nast announced the closure of its glossy business magazine Portfolio only about two years after it launched, held out some hope for the business reporting trade. She said that some journalists should consider applying for jobs at the SEC.

“Investigative journalism actually would be a pretty interesting skill set for us to have. We’ve talked about financial analysis, we’ve talked about forensic accounting being skill sets that we really need — understanding of complex trading, strategies and systems, but it’s one of the things the SEC has to do. It has to really broaden its horizons and bring in people who think about things a little differently than it has historically.”

But what would having Mr/Ms Investigative Journalist working there do for the SEC’s tarnished media image? And how would a hard-nosed investigative journalist respond to all those agreements to let some of the bad guys off with a rap over the knuckles and a small fine (those infamous “did not admit or deny” settlements)?

SEC’s Schapiro shows little interest in Cox’s pet projects

When he was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox got slammed by many for failing to protect investors during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, including missing Bernie Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme. Now, to add insult to injury, his successor is showing little interest in his pet projects concerning corporate disclosure and accounting standards, and questioning whether at least one of them is even appropriate.

Cox’s interest in forcing listed companies to file financial reports using technology that makes it easier for investors to read and analyze the data became almost an obsession during his time at the SEC from August 2005 until this past January. Indeed, the SEC voted through a rule to require 500 of the largest public companies to begin filing their reports with the technology known as XBRL, or extensible business reporting language, by the middle of this year, with the rest instructed to comply over the following two years.

It is just about the last costly requirement companies want to hear about as they fight for their survival through these doom-laden times. Indeed, in the results of a national survey of CFOs and senior comptrollers conducted by accountants Grant Thornton LLP, that was issued last week, 64 percent of public companies said they had no plans to use XBRL despite the SEC mandate.

Now, they may be getting some relief from new SEC head Mary Schapiro. She made it abundantly clear that XBRL was very low down her priority list when she spoke at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit on Tuesday, and she hinted that the SEC might allow for delays in compliance, though she didn’t know if that would be necessary. “I don’t mean to be dismissive of it in any way — it’s just not one of my highest priorities,” she said.

Even worse, unlike Cox she has little interest in promoting the initiative, though she does acknowledge it could become a useful tool. “I’ve only given I think three speeches and I don’t think those letters (XBRL) have slipped into into any of them,” she said.

Another Cox initiative was the decision to allow companies to use their websites and blogs to release market-sensitive information, and in some cases avoid normal distribution channels, such as BusinessWire, which is part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc, and PRNewswire, a division of United Business Media Plc.

Schapiro said she had “a little bit of a visceral reaction” to the idea that investors might have to go and look for the information rather than getting it through a broader distribution, though said she would need to study the question more. She also noted that even now some investors don’t have easy access to the Web.