Forbes – The Securities and Exchange Commission routinely rejects more than half of all Freedom of Information Act requests for data that could help investors better select investment advisors, even while it allowed a staff economist to use some of the same data in her own published research, a prominent law professor says.
Columbia Law School Professor Robert Jackson filed a FOIA request with the SEC last year, seeking years of data on private investment advisors for a project on predicting broker fraud based on past behavior, only to be told the agency didn’t have the information. The SEC requires most investment managers to file an annual Form ADV disclosing conflicts of interest, firm ownership and any civil and criminal penalties for fraud and other violations, but it told Jackson the dataset is actually held and maintained by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a non-governmental organization that oversees brokers.
