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Last week, SEC Chair Clayton danced around the issue of whether the SEC would go through a formal rulemaking process to institute mandated arbitration. This occurred during the Q&A portion of his remarks at CII’s Spring Conference. As we’ve blogged, mandatory arbitration would be a major change to a decades-old policy of the SEC. It perhaps would be the single most anti-investor policy change the SEC could make in several decades – if it happens.

Chair Clayton said he would not commit to going through formal rulemaking, including the public comment & economic analysis under the Administrative Procedure Act. He said instead that the SEC would use some “fair” process to make the change (if the policy change was to occur) – but refused to say if that would include a formal public comment & economic process.

Last week, over two dozen House Financial Services Committee Democrats sent this letter to Chair Clayton asking the SEC to reject mandatory arbitration as a matter of public interest and the law…

Farewell to Julie Yip-Williams

Nearly five years ago, I blogged about meeting Julie Yip-Williams and her battle with cancer. I referenced her popular blog about her battle. I know that she has touched many in our community as I am asked about her all the time. I am sad to report that Julie has finally passed away. Here is Julie’s obit that ran today in the NY Times.

As noted in this recent CBS report, Julie had an amazing – and challenging – life. Here’s an excerpt:

It started 42 years ago in post-war Vietnam. Julie was born totally blind. Immediately, her grandmother intervened. “She set up a meeting between my parents and this herbalist, and had my mother and father take me to this man,” she said.

And her grandma’s intention was what? “To have me killed,” she said, “because I was blind.”

“And she just thought there was absolutely no future in that?”

“There was no future for me, nobody would ever want to marry me, I was an embarrassment to the family,” Julie said.

Spring Awakening: Notes from This Year’s CII Meeting

Here’s the intro from Nell Minow’s blog about CII’s Spring Conference:

The theme I heard most often at the annual spring meeting of the Council of Institutional Investors was ESG: environmental/social/governance risks and investment opportunities. The issues of how best to understand ESG and factor it into assessing investment risk and return and how to respond as investors through proxy voting or engagement came up in a number of contexts. Other issues that were raised more than once included voting rights, crypto-currencies and initial coin offerings, and international investments and investors.

– Broc Romanek