The many problems with the Investment Advisers Modernization Act
While Americans for Financial Reform and our allies are busy campaigning for closing loopholes that are special privileges for private funds, the Majority on the Hill is proposing to do away with even the limited existing reporting requirements to protect investors and increase accountability.
On May 17th, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets held a hearing to discuss a bill called the Investment Advisers Modernization Act of 2016. Far from actually modernizing the industry, the bill rolls the clock back to a time when private fund advisers operated in the shadows, without meaningful oversight. The bill would enable the exploitation of investors and reduce the information available to regulators to address systemic risk by rolling back key reporting requirements, and by interfering with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to investigate fraud at individual firms. (For a full breakdown of the problems with this bill, please see AFR’s opposition letter).
One of the witnesses who testified was Jennifer Taub, a Professor at Vermont Law School and author of Other People’s Houses, a book on the foreclosure crisis. Professor Taub pointed out in her written testimony that the Investment Advisers Modernization Act could not only “undermine investor protection and trust, which could inhibit or drive up the cost of capital,” but would also “allow certain private equity advisers and other private fund advisers that have been exposed as lacking in recent SEC examinations to hide their tracks.”