SEC Publishes Text of RAND Report

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

04 January 2008

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has received and published the text of the RAND Corporation's final report on practices in the investment adviser and broker-dealer industries.

"The Commission has been anxious to receive RAND's study of the investment adviser and broker-dealer industries, and the nature of their relationships with customers," it announced.

SEC Chairman, Christopher Cox continued:"The report will assist the Commission's efforts to update our regulations to improve investor protections in today's new marketplace. Our staff is now studying the report and the potential regulatory implications of its findings."

RAND produced the report under contract with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is the product of more than a year of empirical study and analysis.

Following a March 2007 Court of Appeals decision that overturned a 2005 SEC rule permitting non-adviser broker-dealers to charge fees to investors based on account size, the SEC and RAND agreed that RAND would deliver its final, peer-reviewed report in pre-publication format on Dec. 31, 2007, three months earlier than the contract had originally required.

The text of the posted report is final and has been peer-reviewed. Neither the data nor the analysis on which it is based will change. The fully formatted, publication version of RAND's final report is due by March 25, 2008.

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