Dodd-Frank and the Single Girl

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Babs Deacon. Published: 2013-07-08 05:45:34Format, images and links may no longer function correctly. Naturally, I’ve always been a huge fan of government regulation of corporate governance and record keeping.  When SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) came out in 2002, I couldn’t put it down.  But for some reason I just wasn’t interested in the Dodd-Frank Act (Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act).  When it was passed in 2010, I was briefly caught up in the brouhaha surrounding now Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) possible leadership of the agency she helped found, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, but when that controversy died down, I stopped paying attention thinking, it’s really just about banks.

Many people joined me in assuming Dodd-Frank was just increased regulation of Wall Street following its 2008 meltdown, but boy, were we wrong.  It’s pretty much about any and all US publicly traded companies, as well as most financial entities.  As the SEC says about their own intentions, Dodd-Frank is “a framework that will support an entirely new regulatory regime”.

The Act covers corporate endeavors from derivatives trading to mine safety.  At a gut-busting 9,000 pages, I really needed the crib notes and more importantly, I need to know how it related to eDiscovery and Information Governance in the real world.  Luckily for me, I was able to assist Greg Buckles in writing an eDJ Report, Dodd-Frank: Information Governance And eDiscovery Next Steps, highlighting the eDiscovery and Info Governance impact, which brought me a long way to understanding the broad reach of Dodd-Frank.

I think one of the issues most striking to me and the one that really got my head out of the sand was that an overwhelming majority of US corporations trade swaps or derivatives to hedge the day-to-day risk of doing business.  Now that Dodd-Frank is regulating these trades, for everyone, not just broker/dealers whose primary business activity is trading these instruments, organizations that trade just to offset risk have a whole host of requirements they need to understand.  This “turbo” level of record keeping will demand enormous amounts of preparation and will require those of us in the industry to learn to talk Dodd-Frank-speak pretty fast

A great place to start is by attending eDJ’s Webinar, The Impact of Dodd-Frank on eDiscovery, Governance & IT, sponsored by Symantec.

Greg and I will be joined by Former Magistrate Judge Ron J. Hedges and Pillsbury eDiscovery Partner David Stanton in introducing the key components of Dodd-Frank that will effect us all with its “moving target” initial 243 rules that have grown to 398, at last count.  We will be discussing issues of most interest to industry professionals, including:

• Understanding Who is Covered
• Breaking Down the New Requirements
• Dodd-Frank Challenges
• Meeting the Technology Requirements
• eDiscovery in a Dodd-Frank World

We are hoping our Webinar and research report will give our industry colleagues a leg up in understanding the Dodd-Frank road ahead.

Babs Deacon can be reached at babs@edjgroupinc.com for offline comments or questions. Her 2013 research focus is on software and service provider selection.