Petro America - Kansas Corporation

[nodummy]

I've been reading up on the process for getting a new trading symbol. Sounds like it is done through FINRA simply by paying some kind of processing fee which was only a few hundred dollars depending on which exchange.

Apparently though FINRA's jurisdiction and regulatory authority does not reach very far. They were not privy to certain information about companies and their securities which led to some major concerns by the SEC about companies exploiting the system to further advance their fraudulent activities.

Here is a quote from one very small section of the documents I read:

See, e.g., Commission Order of Suspension of Trading In the Matter of Andros Isle, Corporation, et al., dated March 13, 2008 (File No. 500-1), in which the Commission suspended trading pursuant to Section 12(k) of the Act, 15 U.S.C. 78l(k), in the securities of approximately 26 Pink Sheet securities, stating “[c]ertain persons appear to have usurped the identity of a defunct or inactive publicly traded corporation, initially by incorporating a new entity using the same name, and then by obtaining a new CUSIP number and ticker symbol based on the apparently false representation that they were duly authorized officers, directors and/or agents of the original publicly traded corporation.” See also SEC v. Irwin Boock, Stanton B.J. DeFreitas, Nicolette D. Loisel, Roger L. Shoss, and Jason C. Wong, Birte Boock, and 1621566 Ontario, Inc., Civil Action No. 09 CV 8261 (S.D.N.Y.) (DLC), Litigation Release No. 21243 (October 8, 2009) (Commission Charges Five With Dozens of Fraudulent Corporate Hijackings and Unregistered Offerings of Securities and Names Two Relief Defendants)



Basically the SEC is proposing several changes allowing FINRA more access to information about the companies making certain requests (like symbol changes), requiring FINRA to fully investigate a company to make sure there are no indicators of potential fraud, and requiring FINRA to announce to other other governing agencies when companies are making requests like a symbol change.

Here is a link to the entire document. It goes much much deeper than what I wrote in this post:

http://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/finra/2010/34-62434.pdf