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The purpose of this paper is to report findings from an investigation on the information culture and recordkeeping in two Chinese companies, exploring the interaction between information culture and recordkeeping.

On the basis of systematic literature review, this research investigates the information culture and recordkeeping in two Chinese companies by conducting in-depth interviews with the staff of the two companies.

The attitude of the leadership and the staff towards records and information is different in the result-oriented information culture and rule-following culture. If a company aims to stay innovative and competitive, an information culture that can facilitate the good governance of records and information should be developed, and information professionals can play a key role in working towards this.

As a qualitative study of information culture and recordkeeping in Chinese companies, this paper provides the insight into the interaction between information culture and recordkeeping, demonstrates the impact of information culture on information governance and identifies the factors influencing information culture in an organization.

To provide an overview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (the “CFTC” or “Commission”) recent amendments to CFTC Rule 1.31, which sets forth recordkeeping requirements for all records required to be kept pursuant to the Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”) and Commission regulations.

This article discusses the significant May 2017 amendments to CFTC Rule 1.31 and the practical impact of these amendments for entities subject to the rule’s requirements.

The CFTC’s recordkeeping amendments do not impose any new substantive recordkeeping requirements, but modernize and make technology neutral the form and manner in which regulatory records must be kept. By eliminating a number of prescriptive and outdated requirements, the amendments should provide greater flexibility to “records entities” to adopt new technologies in response to evolving technological developments.

Practical guidance from experienced commodities, futures and derivatives lawyers.

The ability to establish sustainable frameworks for creating and managing recordkeeping metadata is one of the key challenges for recordkeeping in digital and networked environments. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the Clever Recordkeeping Metadata Project, an Australian research project which sought to investigate how the movement of recordkeeping metadata between systems could be automated.

The project adopted an action research approach to the research, utilising a systems development method within this framework to iteratively build a prototype demonstrating how recordkeeping metadata could be created once in particular application environments, then used many times to meet a range of business and recordkeeping purposes.

Recordkeeping metadata interoperability, like recordkeeping metadata itself, is complex and dynamic. The research identifies the need for standards and tools to reflect and have the capacity to handle this complexity.

This paper provides insights into the complex nature of recordkeeping metadata and the kind of infrastructure that needs to be developed to support its automated capture and re‐use in integrated systems environments.

To explain the new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Rule 2a-5 (the “Fair Value Rule”) under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the “1940 Act”), which addresses the valuation practices of registered investment companies and business development companies.

Provides an overview of the Fair Value Rule, followed by a more detailed summary of the key provisions, including relevant guidance provided by the SEC in the release adopting the Fair Value Rule.

The Fair Value Rule establishes a specific framework, a standard of baseline practices across funds, and a set of required functions that must be performed in order to determine in good faith the fair value of a fund’s investments for purposes of applying Section 2(a)(41) of the 1940 Act.

Practical guidance from experienced investment management lawyers.

The use of electronic media in the financial services industry is discussed in light of the regulatory framework in which the industry exists. The authors explore this issue in regards to both the securities and futures regulatory structure.

In April 2017, FINRA issued a regulatory notice addressing the use of social media and digital communications by broker-dealers. The notice expanded on previous FINRA guidance on these topics. This article provides clarity regarding how social media and digital communications fit within the requirements of various FINRA rules and provides guidance to firms and their registered representatives.

The principal topics addressed by FINRA’s regulatory notice are: (a) text messaging, (b) personal versus business communications, (c) third-party content and hyperlinks, (d) native advertising, (e) testimonials and endorsements and (f) links to BrokerCheck. This article presents an overview of each of these topics, respectively.

Under recordkeeping requirements, firms must ensure that they are able to retain communications made through text messaging and chat services. Business communications, which relate to the products or services of the firm, are subject to filing and content requirements, while personal communications are not. Under certain circumstances, third-party posts on social media sites established by the member and testimonials may be attributable to the firm. Native advertising, while permissible, must comply with content requirements. Firm-created electronic applications do not have to provide a link to BrokerCheck.

Firms and their registered representatives will gain a better understanding of what is permissible pursuant to FINRA and SEC rules as they communicate digitally and via social media.

During 2003, compensation practices for the retail sale of mutual funds came under fire. Recent revelations about failures in the processing of mutual fund breakpoints had triggered a more in‐depth investigation into mutual fund marketing and compensation practice by securities regulators, Congress, and the states. This article focuses on the regulation of sales compensation practices primarily as it affects a broker‐dealer selling mutual funds in the retail market. It addresses the regulatory framework for three key compensation practices: (1) the use of non‐cash compensation in connection with mutual fund sales; (2) marketing and compensation arrangements providing enhanced compensation to a selling firm as well as to its sales representatives for the promotion of certain fund securities over others, such as proprietary funds over non‐proprietary funds, preferred funds over non‐preferred funds, and Class B shares over Class A shares; and (3) the use of commissions for mutual fund portfolio trades as an additional source of selling compensation for selling firms, a practice sometimes referred to as ”directed brokerage.“

To alert lenders, broker-dealers and municipal advisors to a joint regulatory notice from the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (“MSRB”) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) regarding direct purchase or “bank loan” transactions.

Explains the MSRB and FINRA notice, why the notice was issued, what lenders should know about the notice, what broker-dealers and municipal advisors should know about the notice, and what MSRB rules could apply to bank loans.

Firms should determine whether state and local government obligations acquired through bank loan transactions constitute municipal securities for federal securities law purposes.

Review of a recently issued regulatory notice by experienced municipal securities lawyers.

Optimising metadata implementation can significantly improve records management practice. This article aims to identify a number of important issues that should be considered in any implementation of recordkeeping metadata in order to optimise that implementation.

The research presented was part of a doctoral thesis “Purposeful data: the roles and purposes of recordkeeping metadata” which itself was part of a collaborative research project seeking to comprehensively specify and codify recordkeeping metadata. The purposes were identified via a research method known as warrant analysis.

Literary warrant identified that metadata fulfil seven different purposes: identifying all entities at all levels of aggregation; establishing connections between related entities; sustaining record structure, content and accessibility through time; administering record‐keeping business; documenting the history of recordkeeping events; facilitating discovery, understanding, retrieval and delivery; and documenting metadata attribution.

Recordkeeping systems should be designed with full awareness of the capacities of metadata and following a full assessment of the organisational needs that should be met by the system. Through better system design and well‐considered metadata implementation, records management operations in any environment can be significantly improved.

The paper establishes key roles of metadata and the importance of system design metadata implementation based on doctoral research.

Maintaining infrastructures such as roads, bridges, railways and other civil constructions requires long term documentation that ideally should comprise a reliable reflection of the physical structures. However, the Swedish Transport Administration (TRA) states that its documentation is currently inadequate and that new working method are needed. The purpose of this paper is to study how the agency is working to improve their recordkeeping, by taking a closer look at two new positions that now coordinate the delivery of documentation from the building process teams to the agency. What is their role and what challenges do they face with regard to creating, sharing and preserving records with other areas across the TRA? The study’s purpose is also to discuss the concept of the archive in the current environment and how existing archival theory can be applied to long term documentation.

The study used a case study method, as the aim was to explore and understand recordkeeping practices and theoretical implications, without seeking to generalize the findings outside the Swedish Government. Two positions – the delivering coordinator and the receiving coordinator – were chosen as relevant focuses, due to their function as links between departments in which it was previously indicated that creating and maintaining reliable recordkeeping was difficult and where organizational structure might challenge the traditional archival theory. Documents and reports from the agency were used as research material through documentary analysis and a questionnaire consisting of 10 questions was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with 10 coordinators at the agency.

Obtaining the correct documentation at the right time and of appropriate quality from contractors and entrepreneurs was difficult, despite detailed contractual rules and regulations identifying what should be delivered. The work of the coordinators was formally connected to the important tasks of creating, sharing and preserving records with other areas within the TRA, but in reality, the coordinators faced several difficulties due to expectations of their professional role, practices in information management between different departments and archives creation at the entire agency. The interviewees therefore had differing perceptions of what was meant by TRA’s “archive”: it was variously perceived as only including the registry; comprising only the records preserved by the archives department or encompassing only those records in the registry or in the agency’s business system/s. Findings indicate that the concepts of multiple provenances and the recordkeeping “single mind” might provide insights to better inform the recordkeeping principles needed to improve the current environment.

The study was limited to the 10 interviewees in 2 roles, although there are more positions involved in handling records. Future studies may solidify or contest the different themes identified in the present paper, through interviews of those additional roles at the agency. This paper uses the Swedish concept of the archive as a point of departure in its analysis.

By increasing the knowledge about positions that are responsible for handling records at an agency, this paper can get a better understanding of how they affect the ultimate creation of archives. This will give Swedish public agencies and other organizations, better results when they are creating strategies to preserve reliable records for the future.