Klaus J. Hopt is former director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg, Germany. This post is based on his recent paper.
The establishment and use of internal investigations, whistleblowing and external monitoring is a topic of current importance for scholarship, legislation and corporate practice. Internal investigations into (suspected) legal violations by companies, sometimes triggered by whistleblowing and, of late, sometimes tracked by external monitoring are components of corporate compliance. These three information and enforcement channels relate to the core area of corporate management and they are a task of the management and/or the board. The Board must investigate suspected legal violations in the company, but it has broad discretion as to the manner in which the specific violation of law should be addressed and as to the necessary scope of the inquiry. In practice, a typical sequence of a stages and steps has been established in practice for internal investigations: (1) Indication of an incident: plausibility assessment, preparation, possible ad hoc measures, investigation; (2) Legal assessment of the interim result based on the facts at hand, data analysis and interviews; (3) Result and reporting: measures, tracking, follow-up and identification of lessons learned. There is a broad and detailed body of comparative legal experiences from the USA, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and other European countries on internal investigations, whistleblowing and external monitoring. These experiences are reported in detail in the corresponding article in the European Company and Financial Law Review (ECFR) 2021, October issue.
Testimony by SEC Chair Gensler Before the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government
More from: Gary Gensler, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Gary Gensler is Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on his Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, U.S. House Appropriations Committee. The views expressed in the post are those of Chair Gensler, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Staff.
Good afternoon, Chairman Quigley, Ranking Member Womack, and members of the Subcommittee. I’m honored to appear before you today for the first time as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thank you for inviting me to testify on the agency today. Before I begin, I’d like to note that my views are my own, and I am not speaking on behalf of my fellow Commissioners or the staff.
Having started at the SEC last month, I have been struck by the sheer breadth and scope of the capital markets and the agency’s work. The SEC oversees the nearly $100-trillion capital markets, or measured another way, about $110 trillion in assets under management. Our responsibilities include 28,000 registered entities, more than 3,700 broker-dealers, 24 national securities exchanges, seven clearing agencies, and more than 2,300 filings from self-regulatory organizations. [1]
Those $100-trillion capital markets affect nearly every American. The $50-trillion debt markets are how local governments raise funds, how corporations borrow money, or how construction of the hospital down the street gets financed. They also fund our mortgages and auto loans. Our $45-trillion public equity markets, which get most of the attention, connect Americans looking to invest with public companies seeking to grow, innovate, and hire employees. Our multi-trillion-dollar private equity and venture capital markets also play a significant role.
READ MORE »