CIMA and US SEC partner to offer regional training

The agencies will run the intensive three-day course on regulation, inspection and enforcement from Monday to Wednesday, 12-14 April, at the Grand Cayman Marriott. Senior SEC officials and regulatory subject matter experts; local accounting, legal and administrative professionals, and CIMA officials, will lead a series of lectures, small-group workshops and panel discussions.

Participants are expected from the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, the Securities Commission of Barbados, the Bermuda Monetary Authority, the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission, Jamaica’s Financial Services Commission, the Central Bank of the Netherland Antilles, as well as the Cayman Stock Exchange and CIMA.

CIMA’s Managing Director Cindy Scotland, explained that the programme came out of the Authority’s focus on ensuring that staff keeps abreast of the latest regulatory techniques and issues and was part of CIMA’s ongoing commitment to international cooperation.

”We recognize that we are a part of an international financial services industry that is constantly changing and deeply interconnected,” said Scotland, “Our ability to regulate effectively is dependent, not only on the knowledge and skill of our own staff, but also on the knowledge and skill of other regulators. It is in our mutual interest to cooperate with, and draw from, each other.”

Ethiopis Tafara,the Director of the SEC’s Office of International Affairs, through which the Commission’s involvementwas arranged, agreed with Mrs. Scotland: “We are very pleased to co-sponsor this regional training program with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. Among other things, the recent crisis has highlighted how important it is for securities regulators to gather in programs such as this to exchange best practices and to build the bridges necessary to coordinate market oversight and enforcement across international boundaries. We greatly value this partnership with our fellow regulators.”

Aspects to be covered during the course include: the state of the hedge fund industry and the infrastructure and operating environment of hedge funds; the supervisory process; techniques for examining broker dealers and investment advisors; investigating market manipulation and insider trading; safety and custody of investor assets; conflicts of interest; valuation practices; compliance and control best practice; marketing issues; money laundering and the securities industry, and cross border cooperation.

The SEC facilitators were obtained through the Commission’s Office of International Affairs, which runs a technical assistance programme that pulls expertise from throughout the SEC to assist other regulators in capacity building. The Commission and CIMA worked together to identify topics that would be most relevant to local and regional markets. CIMA extended the programme to its regional counterparts, identified local speakers and handled the event logistics.

The overseas presenters are Thomas Biolsi, a principal in the Financial Services Regulatory Practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers; Assistant Director of the SEC’s Office of International Affairs Dr. Robert Fisher; Assistant Regional Director of the Enforcement Division in the SEC’s New York regional office Bruce Karpati, and Associate Director – Chief Counsel John Walsh of the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations.

Local presenters include Walkers Hedge Funds Partner Ingrid Pierce; Maples and Calder Partners Jon Fowler and Martin Livingston; PricewaterhouseCoopers Partner David Walker; RBC Dominion Securities Global Limited’s Managing Director Andrew McCartney; Ernst & Young Partner Michael O’Donnell, and Admiral Administration’s Managing Director Canover Watson. Local regulatory perspectives will be provided by Financial Reporting Authority Director Lindsey Cacho; CIMA’s Head of Compliance RJ Berry and Deputy Managing Director – General Counsel Langston Sibblies, QC.  Scotland and Tafara will open the programme.