PHILADELPHIA – Four members of Stradley Ronon’s Fiduciary Governance Group will present at a Chief Compliance Officer Roundtable in Chicago on June 21. Co-chairs Lawrence P. Stadulis and George Michael Gerstein, along with Sara P. Crovitz and Alan A. Goldberg, will discuss the practical implications of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent standard of conduct release and emerging state legislative developments for investment advisory firms and broker-dealers.
Stradley’s fiduciary governance group counsels investment committees and intermediaries, such as investment advisers, banks, broker-dealers, retirement plan/IRA service providers, insurance providers and mutual fund directors, by identifying and making sense of this regulatory patchwork and helping clients understand the interplay of federal and state rules on 1) whether they owe a fiduciary or best interest duty to their customers, and 2) if so, the specific requirements that flow from such status. Moreover, the group keeps clients ahead of the curve by identifying emerging trends in the fiduciary landscape, such as environmental, social & governance (ESG) investing, through fiduciarygovernanceblog.com, webinars and written alerts. The fiduciary governance group also actively tracks the burgeoning state legislative efforts to impose fiduciary or comparable investment advice standards of care.
The fiduciary governance group leverages its technical understanding of both federal and state fiduciary rules to advise clients across regulatory schemes. The group seeks to help clients scale compliance programs under a particular regulatory regime to comply with other applicable fiduciary rules and requirements. The fiduciary governance group also helps identify the daylight between the fiduciary requirements of federal and state statutes and regulations.
Stadulis co-chairs the fiduciary governance group and advises clients in matters pertaining to the registration and regulation of investment advisers and investment companies under federal and state securities laws. He also manages related issues pertaining to investment advisers and investment companies, including matters involving ERISA, broker-dealer regulation and banking laws.
Gerstein advises financial institutions on the fiduciary and prohibited transaction provisions of ERISA. As co-chair of the fiduciary governance group, he assists clients with tracking, and understanding, the numerous fiduciary developments at the federal and state levels, including the rules and regulations of governmental plans. He also advises clients with respect to the fiduciary duty implications of ESG investing.
Crovitz, most recently Deputy Chief Counsel and Associate Director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Investment Management, provides counsel on all aspects of investment company and investment adviser regulation. She worked at the SEC for 21 years, including 17 years in the Division of Investment Management focusing on issues under the Investment Company and Investment Advisers Acts of 1940. While in the Division, Crovitz supervised the provision of significant legal guidance to the investment management industry through no-action and interpretive letters, exemptive applications, IM guidance updates and other written and oral means.
Goldberg represents registered investment companies and their independent board members, registered investment advisers, sponsors to unregistered investment pools and family offices. He handles all aspects of creating registered investment companies and registering new investment advisers, including the establishment of compliance policies and procedures. Goldberg regularly prepares regulatory filings and applications on behalf of investment companies, including mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds and investment advisers, and he has performed numerous comprehensive compliance reviews of investment advisers and investment companies.
About Stradley Ronon
Counseling clients since 1926, Stradley Ronon has helped private and public companies – from small businesses to Fortune 500 corporations – achieve their goals by providing pragmatic, value-driven legal counsel. With offices in eight strategic locations, our responsive team of more than 200 attorneys seamlessly addresses the full spectrum of our clients’ needs, ranging from sophisticated corporate transactions to complex commercial litigation.