SEC Proposes Amendments to Enhance Retail Investor Protections

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it has voted to propose amendments to Exchange Act Rule 15c2-11, which sets out certain requirements with which a broker-dealer must comply before it can publish quotations for securities in the over-the-counter (“OTC”) market. The proposed amendments are designed to modernize the Rule, which was last substantively amended in 1991, and to enhance investor protection by requiring that current and publicly available issuer information is accessible to investors. The proposed amendments would provide greater transparency to the investing public by requiring that information about the issuer and the security be current and publicly available before a broker-dealer can begin quoting that security.