According to the New York Times , Thomas Flanagan, a former Deloitte & Touche partner, and his son, Patrick Flanagan, have agreed to pay over $1.1 million to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission case that accused the pair of insider trading. The SEC claimed that Thomas Flanagan violated auditor independence rules and Deloitte policies by trading on information about Deloitte clients Best Buy, Sears, and Walgreen, and by providing information to his son for additional trades. Under the settlement agreement, the pair neither admits nor denies wrongdoing.



In a speech to the Chamber of Commerce, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro pointed to the breadth and depth of rulemaking required by the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Act, and noted that the SEC would go beyond legal requirements and open the doors for public comment – even before proposed regulations are drafted. A series of email in-boxes have been created at sec.gov and organized by topic, so that interested parties can provide preliminary comments. Schapiro also noted five areas of regulatory reform that the SEC would address, namely OTC derivatives, fiduciary duty of broker-dealers and investment advisors, hedge fund registration, expanding corporate disclosures, and credit rating agency oversight.