Panel Discussion:
“The SEC Study Regarding Obligations of Brokers, Dealers, and Investment Advisers:
What Does it Mean for Investors, Firms, Brokers, And Advisers?”
February 2011
New York Law School
Keynote:
Tom Bradley, President, TDA Institutional
At TD Ameritrade Institutional, J. Thomas Bradley, Jr. oversees all institutional business functions, including the company’s independent investment advisor services, directed brokerage, self-directed 401(k) and retirement trust businesses. He was recently responsible for TD Ameritrade’s U.S. independent advisor services, correspondent clearing and capital markets businesses. Mr. Bradley has received several industry awards, including The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors’ Special Achievement Award (2006), the Texas Tech Lifetime Achievement Visionary Award (2008) and Investment Advisor Magazine’s Most Influential People (2006 and 2009).
Moderator:
Tara Siegel Bernard, New York Times personal finance reporter
Tara Siegel Bernard is a personal finance reporter for The New York Times. Before joining The Times in 2008, she was deputy managing editor at FiLife, a personal finance Web site, and a news editor at CNBC. Ms. Siegel Bernard spent a decade at Dow Jones, where she wrote a weekly personal finance column and was a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal’s small-business and health costs columns. Before writing about personal finance, she covered the banking and credit card industries. Ms. Siegel Bernard graduated from Hofstra University and lives with her husband in Brooklyn, and can be reached at tsbernard@nytimes.com.
Panelists:
James A. Fanto, Professor, Brooklyn Law School
In addition to teaching courses at Brooklyn Law School, James Fanto writes and lectures (in the U.S. and abroad) on laws relating to banks, broker-dealers, corporate boards, comparative corporate governance, cross-cultural securities disclosure, merger decision making and differences in business law and enterprises between the United States and France. He is the author of several books, pens law review articles, and edits an e-journal in the Social Science Research Network. Mr. Fanto also serves as an independent consultant on corporate and securities law, and is an associate director of the Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law, and directs the International Economic Law Forums, both at Brooklyn Law School. Prior to academia, he practiced banking, corporate, and securities law in Washington, Paris and New York, and clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Louis H. Pollak and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun.
Thomas M. Selman, EVP, Regulatory Policy, FINRA
Since 2008, Thomas M. Selman, has overseen FINRA’s departments of Corporate Finance, Advertising Regulation, Investment Companies Regulation, and Member Education and Training, and the Offices of Emerging Regulatory Issues and Economic Analysis. Prior to this role, Mr. Selman served as SVP, Investment Companies Regulation/Corporate Financing beginning in 2000. (He served in the same capacity at NASD, which consolidated with NYSE Member Regulation to form FINRA in 2007.) Mr. Selman has also served: from 1986-1987 as an Attorney-Advisor to the European Union; beginning in 1987 as Special Counsel in the SEC’s Office of General Counsel; and from 1992-1996 as Associate Counsel at the Investment Company Institute, a trade association for the mutual fund industry. He authors legal articles, and graduated from The University of Texas School of Law, where he was Associate Editor of the Texas Law Review.
Michael Koffler, Partner, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
As a member of Sutherland’s Financial Services Practice Group and head of the firm’s Investment Adviser Team, Michael Koffler focuses on the investment adviser and broker-dealer industries. Mr. Koffler also works on securities issues associated with the management and distribution of investment products by financial institutions, including investment advisers, wirehouses, banks, independent broker-dealers and insurance companies. He has spent two years on the staff of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management, where he reviewed registration statements, no-action requests, exemptive applications and proxy statements, and helped promulgate SEC rules and answer interpretive questions from financial institutions.
Robert L. D. Colby, Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell, former SEC Deputy Director of Market Regulation
Robert L. Colby is a partner in Davis Polk’s Washington DC office where he advises on complex regulatory and compliance matters involving securities and derivatives for broker-dealers, financial institutions, investment advisers, markets, and clearing organizations. Prior to Davis Polk, Mr. Colby served for 17 years as the Deputy Director of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets, where he was responsible for the regulation of broker-dealers, securities markets, and clearing organizations. Previously, he was Chief Counsel of the Division and Chief of the Division’s Branch of Market Structure. Mr. Colby has been recognized as a leading lawyer by Chambers USA 2010, where he is identified as “greatly respected by peers and valued by clients for his ‘fantastic, pragmatic advice’ in the broker-dealer area.” Mr. Colby graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College (B.A., 1977; Phi Beta Kappa), and cum laude from Harvard Law School (J.D., 1981).
Knut A. Rostad, Chairman, The Committee for the Fiduciary Standard
Knut A. Rostad, Chairman of the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard, is the Regulatory and Compliance Officer at Rembert Pendleton Jackson, a registered investment adviser in Falls Church, Va. Mr. Rostad has represented the firm in numerous initiatives to advance fiduciary status before the SEC and in Congress, and served on the Financial Planning Association Government Relations Committee and “Best Practices” Task Force Panel in 2008. He is a contributing editor for Wealth Manager and regularly speaks at industry forums. Mr. Rostad earned a B.A. in Political Science at the University of Vermont, and an M.B.A. from the Norwegian School of Management. He is an Accredited Investment Fiduciary with the Center for Fiduciary Studies.