Guess What? Finally, what some of us have been fighting for for a very long time....over 5 years....to get the OTCBB out of the hands of those who have allowed this abusive naked shorting to continue for so long! Now, the NASD, the only entity on Wall Street has taken over the OTCBB market and will police it as is necessary to bring fair-play back to small investors and the companies that are struggling to succeed, like those with the potential of DNAPrint....and I could not be happier. So, bashers, don't try to continue to claim that naked shorting does not exist. This is proof positive and a bad omen for the abusers of small cap companies and their investors.
please take a moment to read the article from Dow Jones...it's what we had hoped for...fought for...for over five years.
Babe
Dow Jones)- The NASD heads into 2006 with a focus on the small- capitalization stock market and a plan to make greater use of technology in routine examinations of brokerage firms.
NASD Vice Chairman Mary Schapiro is overseeing the regulator at a time when the Nasdaq Stock Market has decided to transfer its over-the-counter bulletin board business to the NASD, formerly known as the National Association of Securities Dealers.
"Because the OTC bulletin board has been transferred from Nasdaq to the NASD," she said Tuesday in an interview, "we will have a real focus on the regulation of over-the-counter equities next year as well, and that will bring in with it abusive short selling."
Schapiro said that the NASD is conducting "dozens" of investigations into abusive short selling since a Securities and Exchange Commission regulation went into effect earlier this year. In short sales, investors sell borrowed shares, hoping to buy the stocks back at a lower price and return the shares, pocketing the difference. A type of abuse known as naked short selling occurs when a borrowing arrangement isn't in place so that investors are able to deliver promised shares within three days.
Another area that remains a concern: PIPEs, an acronym for private investment in public equity, a financing technique that is used most often by smaller public companies. The NASD in 2005 banned broker John Mangan Jr. from the brokerage industry and fined him $125,000 on allegations that he obtained company stock through a PIPE offering and then improperly shorted the stock and profited from the sale.
"We've done several cases, and it's going to be high on our agenda for 2006," Schapiro said.
As for its own examination program, Schapiro said that the NASD plans to place greater emphasis on technology-driven risk-based examinations.
"What it may mean is that in some areas we will be doing more or less continuous surveillance of activities, whereas other areas we may be able to do off-site, through data feeds, and for some firms it may mean we are there more often," NASD official Mary Schapiro said.
Schapiro said that the increased use of analytical tools is unlikely to reduce the number of exams the NASD conducts every year, and that "the key is not to be driven by the calendar but rather the risk profile of the firm."
The NASD collected a record $125.4 million in disciplinary fines in 2005 and filed a record 1,412 disciplinary actions. It began 6,600 for-cause examinations, down from 10,658 in 2004, a drop that Schapiro said doesn't necessarily signify that the NASD will announce fewer actions next year.
"I frankly wouldn't have predicted 2005 would be at this level," Schapiro said.
- By Siobhan Hughes, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6654; Siobhan.Hughes@ dowjones.com
Corrected December 27, 200518:
AI
