In a setback to the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal appeals court on Friday overturned a rule bringing hedge funds under new supervision by the agency.
The decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sent the rule -- which bitterly divided the five-member SEC when it was adopted in October 2004 -- back to the agency to be reviewed.
Meanwhile, a major hedge fund that is under SEC investigation for possible insider trading denied that there was any improper activity by the fund.
"The trades at issue were made in the ordinary course of the firm's business and were entirely normal within the context of its daily investing activities," said Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for the hedge fund, Pequot Capital Management Inc.
The SEC rule for hedge funds, which are high-risk, largely unregulated and secretive investment pools, took effect on Feb. 1.
Hedge funds have traditionally been the investment domain of the wealthy but have become popular with smaller investors in recent years. Today some 7,000 hedge funds in the US command an estimated US$750 billion to US$1 trillion in assets and leave a wide footprint in the financial markets, as they are believed to account for as much as 20 percent of all US stock trading.
Regulators' concern about the funds' explosive growth and virtually unbridled operations prompted the SEC rule, which requires most hedge-fund managers to register with the agency. That opens the funds' books to SEC examiners.
But the appeals court, in its decision on Friday, called the SEC rule "arbitrary." The agency failed to make a compelling case for the necessity of the rule, the court said.
The SEC investigation of Pequot Capital came to light in a report on Friday by the New York Times that an SEC attorney who led the probe has told Congress he was blocked by superiors when he tried to question a prominent Wall Street executive.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day