Today, we launched a major new release of Securities Mosaic, which now includes all of the databases formerly constituting the Securities Mosaic Litigator website. So the site has a new Enforcement and Litigation tab that folds in search pages with breathtakingly detailed (if I do say so myself) data culled from a variety of sources: SEC and CFTC Enforcement Releases, SEC Investigation Disclosures, SEC Investors Claims Funds, and PCAOB Inspection Reports. We also now include a complete archive of securities-related Appellate Court decisions since the beginning of 2007 and have added several thousand new law firm memos focusing on securities enforcement and litigation to the Law Firms search page.
It is very slick data, and not available anywhere else because it is mostly hand-tagged to optimize targeted searching. For example, users can filter their search within enforcement actions to include a particular type of violation, or the dollar range of an imposed penalty.
Want to know how many CEOs have received financial penalties in excess of $10 million in actions involving the SEC since 2000? We can tell you that in about 10 seconds. The answer is 19 CEOs, and the largest penalty was imposed on Patrick C. Quinlan in 2005, in the amount of $256 million. He also went to prison for ten years.
Against how many attorneys has the SEC taken action for violating conspiracy laws? The answer is 4, and one of them - Stephen Ziegler - was ordered to pay restitution of more than $800 million! Along with five years in a federal penitentiary. His offense was his participation, as "regulatory counsel" in a scheme that resulted in the fleecing of more than $1 billion from 30,000 investors.
What does the addition of this kind of enforcement and litigation information to Securities Mosaic mean? Two things.
First, I am struck by how these data sets fill out the Securities Mosaic website, and how much more robust it seems. Our goal is to create a seamless environment for conducting any kind of securities-related research, and this addition of the litigation and enforcement information takes a long step in that direction. With this data, one can quickly perform due diligence on individuals, track enforcement trends, and model enforcement scenarios for clients in ways that are simply not possible right now.
With the integration of this data on Securities Mosaic, one can also now more easily map enforcement and litigation trends to disclosure requirements, regulatory rulemaking, and guidance conventions. The view of the securities regulation landscape simply becomes richer and more nuanced.
The second point is that this is the most ambitious new release of Securities Mosaic we've ever undertaken, at least from a customer standpoint, and it bears pointing out that it is occurring in the face of the hurricane-force winds reshaping the business and financial industry landscapes.
The timing is not an accident. Recent events on Wall Street have underscored the need for, and urgency, of an accelerated effort to server industry professionals' ongoing need to know.
Change is afoot, and it will almost certainly include massive reorganization of federal regulatory oversight and control. We understand that. What we at Knowledge Mosaic are betting is that legal and financial industry professionals will need an information portal that reflects a regulation universe that is broader, more integrated, and more demanding.
Our latest upgrade to Securities Mosaic is therefore only the first part of a two-part plan to offer a vastly more broad and complete set of financial and business regulatory materials. We will be covering the full spectrum of federal agency (and deputized SRO) regulations (and legislation) covering both listed companies and financial institutions.
Moreover, we will be topping this broad data platform with a thick layer of current awareness and reporting materials, with the goal of giving our customers an "always on" view of the most recent developments and trends in financial and business law and regulation.
So it is exciting stuff for perilous times. Please check out the new Enforcement and Litigation section of Securities Mosaic and feel free to send on any ideas you have for financial and business data and tools that would most benefit you.
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