Financial Law and Regulation

A surprising number of plan sponsors lack a default investment—or choose a default investment for their plan that isn’t a qualified default investment alternative (QDIA). Is confusion part of the problem?

With the continuing shift from defined benefit (DB) plans to defined contribution (DC) plans, fewer Americans have the ability to enjoy guaranteed income for life. Now, federal regulators are trying to change that.

A recent US Senate bill calls for a restructuring of the government's role in housing finance, including winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Here are five takeaways from the current proposal.

The wealthy will likely see higher 2013 income taxes. One of the newest additions to the tax bill is the 3.8% Medicare surtax. By planning ahead, you may be able to reduce the tax bite—or possibly avoid being bitten altogether.

Washington’s current inactivity poses a challenge for defined contribution (DC) plan sponsors, investment management providers and record keepers. We’ve heard rumblings of legislative, regulatory and perhaps even taxation changes…but what changes seem likely to happen?

A recent Wall Street Journal article implied that some US executives have manipulated 10b5-1 programs to boost gains or reduce losses when trading company stock. Even if these abuses did occur, we think they shouldn’t obscure the value of 10b5-1 programs implemented in good faith.

As Spain slips back into recession, the Spanish government has begun talks on ring-fencing the country’s bad property loans in one or more separate entities. While this may help, we doubt whether the move will be enough on its own to solve Spain’s problems, as our European banking analyst, Victoria Norman, discusses below. 

There’s a growing consensus today that the US government’s huge footprint in the $10.5 trillion mortgage market needs to shrink, with the private sector taking the lead. But there is less agreement on how the transition to a new system should take place. Here’s our perspective as investors in the mortgage market on what is needed to get the ball rolling.

The US government’s housing finance policies in recent decades can be summarized by one simple phrase: quantity over quality. The implicit goal was to increase the quantity of housing finance by keeping mortgage rates low and promoting wider home ownership. For several decades, the system worked. But if we view the long-term stability of home prices as one measure of the quality of housing finance, those policies now don’t look so successful.