Compliance Avenue

The SEC announced today that it will hold a roundtable on securities lending and short sale issues on September 29 and September 30. The roundtable will feature an in-depth review of securities lending practices and also analyze possible short sale pre borrowing requirements and additional short sale disclosures.
Securities Lending and Short Sale Roundtable

Agenda & Panels
According to the roundtable agenda and the official notice of roundtable discussion, the roundtable will consist of panels focused on securities lending and possible short sale pre-borrowing requirements and additional short sale disclosures.

Securities Lending Roundtable
Date:   September 29, 2009
Time:  9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The panelists will consider a range of securities lending topics, such as:

• current lending practices and participants;
• compensation arrangements and conflicts;
• the benefits and risks of securities lending;
• risks related to cash collateral reinvestment;
• improvements to transparency; and
• consideration of whether the securities lending regulatory regime can be improved for the benefit of investors.

Short Sale Roundtable
Date:   September 30, 2009
Time:  9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

The panelists will consider short sale disclosure topics such as:

• whether investors would benefit from adding a short sale indicator to the tapes to which transactions are reported for exchange-listed securities; and
• requiring public disclosure of individual large short positions.

In addition, the panelists will discuss “locate” requirements, specifically:

• the potential impact of imposing a pre-borrow or enhanced “locate” requirement on short sellers, potentially on a pilot basis, as a way to curtail abusive “naked” short selling.

Panelists

The list of panelists will be announced at a later date.  Panelists are expected to include investors, corporate issuers, financial services firms, beneficial owner lenders, lending agents, borrowers of securities, self-regulatory organizations, international regulators and the academic community.

Comments

The SEC will accept comments regarding issues addressed in the roundtable discussion until October 30, 2009.

Interested in Attending or Listening In?

The roundtable discussion will be held in the auditorium at SEC headquarters at 100 F Street NE in Washington, D.C.  The roundtable discussion also will be available via webcast on the SEC web site.