PCAOB Chair Erica Williams to Depart Board on July 22

Statement Regarding Tenure of Erica Williams at the PCAOB

Today I accepted Erica Williams’ offer to resign as chair and a board member of the PCAOB and thanked her for her service. I am grateful she has agreed to stay on until July 22nd. We look forward to advancing our oversight responsibilities of the PCAOB as it continues its important work.

SEC Enforcement in the Second Quarter of 2025

First, every case filed in district court alleged fraud. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that, when the SEC seeks civil penalties for securities fraud, the defendant is entitled to a jury trial. See SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109, 120-21 (2024). So, it is no surprise that the SEC now files all of its fraud cases in district court (where a jury is available) and not in its administrative forum (where cases are decided by administrative law judges). But it is notable that the SEC did not bring any non-fraud cases in district court. Perhaps this reflects that the SEC has refocused its limited enforcement resources on fraud cases involving more egregious conduct, rather than non-fraud cases involving technical violations. Time will tell.

Second, the SEC remains active in the investment adviser space, policing violations involving fee disclosures and conflicts of interest, among other things. Thus, investment advisers should anticipate scrutiny from the SEC and proactively ensure that their disclosures are accurate and their compliance functions operate effectively.

Third, the SEC continues to bring actions against broker-dealers for failing to file SARs….

SEC Charges Former CCO For Altering Records Provided to SEC Examiners

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against a former chief compliance officer of a registered investment adviser for altering records and creating fictitious forms in response to an SEC examination of her employer.

According to the SEC’s order, from September 2022 to September 2023, SEC examiners performed an examination of Suzanne Ballek’s employer, a registered investment adviser. The order finds that as part of that examination, SEC examiners requested documents and information related to the adviser’s pre-clearance trading policy applicable to certain of the adviser’s supervised persons. As stated in the Commission’s order, Ballek, the adviser’s Chief Compliance Officer, in responding to an SEC request for pre-clearance trading forms, modified the dates and/or filled in missing information on many of the forms, which in many cases had been filled out after the trades were completed and after any oral trade authorizations were provided. The Commission’s order finds that by doing so, Ballek created the appearance that certain forms were completed correctly and signed on the date of the transactions. According to the order, in certain instances where there had been no form completed for a particular trade, Ballek created a form and affixed the trader’s signature to it without the trader’s knowledge or authorization before providing it to SEC examiners.

Put the Crypto in the Index Funds

In 2005, “the market portfolio” included mostly stocks and bonds. In 2025, it absolutely includes cryptocurrency, which is now a multi-trillion-dollar asset class. There are various ways to get exposure to crypto (you can just buy Bitcoin, or Bitcoin ETFs, etc.), and I am sure that like 10 people are going to email me about their startups that offer convenient ways to get indexed exposure to crypto (you give them $100 and you get $100 of market-cap-weighted exposure to a bunch of big crypto tokens).

But the simplest and laziest way to get sort-of-index-ish exposure to crypto is to own the total US stock market, because the stock market now includes an ever-growing supply of crypto treasury companies. You might not want crypto in your stock index fund — Vanguard doesn’t want crypto in its stock index funds — but the whole point of an index fund is that you don’t want to invest in what you want! (Or in what a fund manager wants.) You don’t trust yourself (or your fund manager) to want the right things. You want to invest in what the market wants, and what the market wants is crypto.

Allianz Allowed Back Into US Fund Business as SEC Lifts Ban

Allianz SE said the US Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to let it return to the fund business, three years after one of its units pleaded guilty to securities fraud over the collapse of the insurance giant’s Structured Alpha hedge funds.

The 2022 plea by Allianz Global Investors US triggered an automatic 10-year ban from the industry that also limited Allianz’s ability to offer investment advisory services through other businesses, with the exception of Allianz Life and its bond manager Pimco.