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To introduce the concepts of interval funds and tender offer funds and compare them to other pooled investment vehicles.

This article provides an overview of the interval fund and tender offer fund structures, including the law, regulations and market practices regarding redemptions, liquidity, fees and expenses and other key terms.

Interval funds and tender offer funds should be considered by alternative investment managers seeking to expand into public markets or traditional fund managers that seek additional portfolio flexibility.

In addition to a plain English analysis of the rules and regulations applicable to interval funds and tender offer funds, the article analyzes market practices regarding redemption frequency and amount.

To summarize the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s 2017 Compliance Advisory for brokers, dealers and municipal securities dealers.

Summarizes several Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) rules that the Compliance Advisory highlights as presenting key compliance risks for brokers, dealers and municipal securities dealers. Discusses the factors included in the Compliance Advisory that dealers should consider when evaluating compliance procedures and controls.

By highlighting some key compliance risks and providing considerations tailored to those risks, the Compliance Advisory can be used as a tool to aid dealers in developing and assessing effective compliance programs.

Dealers should consider reviewing their firm’s existing compliance policies and procedures in light of the considerations discussed in the Compliance Advisory.

Practical guidance from experienced securities and financial services regulatory lawyers.

May 23, 1968. Trade dispute — Act in furtherance of — Procuring breach of contract — Attempt to establish union in hotel industry — Hotel's agreement to negotiate with other unions — Picketing of hotel — Stoppage of fuel oil supplies — Whether acts done in contemplation or furtherance of trade dispute — Force majeure clause in supplier's contract — Inducement of tanker drivers to break contracts — Whether interference with contractual rights — Whether indirect inducement — Whether picketing of hotel premises nuisance at common law.

To summarize guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) Division of Investment Management regarding Rule 206(4)-2 (the “Custody Rule”) under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

This article summarizes the SEC’s guidance on “inadvertent custody” created by broad authority in custodial agreements, custody created by standing letters of instruction, and adviser authority to transfer funds or securities between two or more of a client's accounts.

This article concludes that firms should review their existing client custodial agreements, standing letters of instruction and other arrangements carefully to determine whether they have custody and whether additional action is necessary.

This article contains information on the Custody Rule and related SEC guidance from experienced securities and financial services regulatory lawyers.

To summarize recent FINRA guidance on social media and digital communications published in Regulatory Notice 17-18.

The intention was to provide a brief summary of the recent FINRA guidance on social media and digital communications published in Regulatory Notice 17-18 along with previous guidance in Regulatory Notices 10-06 and 11-39.

The new guidance focuses on a number of areas of digital communications including text messaging, personal communications, hyperlinks and sharing, native advertising, testimonials and endorsements, correction of third-party content and BrokerCheck links.

Firms should review this new guidance alongside existing FINRA guidance and their current social media and digital communications practices. Where firms observe deficiencies in their existing practices, adjustments should be made before they find themselves the subject of a FINRA investigation, examination or enforcement action.

Practical explanation by experienced financial services lawyers.

The purpose is to assess the impact of clinical costing approaches on the quality of cost information in seven countries (Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Portugal).

Costing practices in seven countries were analysed via questionnaires, interviews and relevant published material.

Although clinical costing is intended to support a similar range of purposes, countries display considerable diversity in their approaches to costing in terms of the level of detail contained in regulatory guidance and the percentage of providers subject to such guidance for tariff setting. Guidance in all countries involves a mix of costing methods.

The authors propose a two-dimensional Materiality and Quality Score (2D MAQS) of costing systems that can support the complex trade-offs in managing the quality of cost information at both policy and provider level, and between financial and clinical concerns.

The authors explore the trade-offs between different dimensions of the quality (accuracy, decision relevance and standardization) and the cost of collecting and analysing cost information for disparate purposes.

In a public health crisis where social distancing, or physical distancing while in public spaces, is the new normal, social media offer respite from being alone. Recent statistics show spikes in social media usage worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic. More than just easing loneliness, such freely available digital tools offer affordances for education in an emergency.

This paper summarizes insights from literature reviews of over a decade of research and recent case studies on the benefits of teaching with social media in K-12 education.

The authors highlight three affordances of social media for fostering active learning, community building and civic participation and describe how social media can be used in conjunction with conventional learning management systems. Furthermore, the authors argue that the unprecedented health crisis that is faced today requires the participation of responsible citizens of all ages; K-12 public education is on the front lines of preparing informed and active citizens and the integration of social media as part of remote education plans can help.

The paper includes instructional guidelines for K-12 teachers and instructional designers in various settings who seek to integrate social media as part of their strategy for teaching students at a distance and facilitating their civic participation.

This paper fulfills an identified need for evidence-based and pragmatic approaches to K-12 online teaching and learning using technologies already widely in use (i.e. social media).

This study aims to investigate the influence of budgeting design characteristics on perceived budgeting usefulness, based on the enabling-coercive framework.

This paper develops a survey in one large publicly-listed Brazilian company that operates in the electric utility industry. The sample comprises 75 middle managers from different areas of this organization. This study uses structural equation modeling as the data analysis method.

The results indicate that internal and global transparencies determine middle managers’ perceptions of budgeting usefulness, while no relationship was found for repair capacity and flexibility characteristics. This paper shows that managers, when provided with global and internal transparencies and independently of their level discretion regarding target revisions or the reallocation of resources, perceive budgeting systems as being useful for decision-facilitating and decision-influencing roles.

The findings might be relevant for budgeting professionals to review or design the budgeting system in terms of dribbling potential flaws and increasing its use in the organization.

The study explores the multidimensionality of the enabling-coercive budgeting design construct. This study provides a theoretical contribution to the literature by showing that budget alignment, integration, learning and information sharing are relevant such that an organization could improve the assertiveness using budgeting systems. Besides, this paper provides an opposing view about the supposed relation between flexible budgeting design and budgeting usefulness. Frequently, some management directions are offered by the literature and no guarantee is provided in terms of the connection between the adoption and the usefulness of those mechanisms. Therefore, the findings shed more light on the practical developments in budgeting.

To summarize the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s 2016 Compliance Advisory for brokers, dealers and municipal securities dealers.

Summarizes several Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) rules that the Compliance Advisory highlights as presenting key compliance risks for brokers, dealers and municipal securities dealers. Discusses the factors included in the Compliance Advisory that dealers should consider when evaluating compliance procedures and controls.

By highlighting some key compliance risks and providing considerations tailored to those risks, the Compliance Advisory can be used as a tool to aid dealers in developing and assessing effective compliance programs.

Dealers should consider reviewing their firms’ existing compliance policies and procedures in light of the considerations discussed in the Compliance Advisory.

Practical guidance from experienced securities and financial services regulatory lawyers.