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Update - August 2016
August 17, 2016

The President's Perspective

With near-record attendance, the SER conference in NYC was an unqualified success. The Union League Club offered us old-world, dignified comfort and a prime location. Our content and speaker lineup lived up to the marvel of the venue.We learned tips for better coordinating with the Legal Clinics.

We were updated on the FINRA-DR Task Force, arbitration trends and statistics, issues involving aging investors and the impact of the DOL’s Fiduciary Rule on securities arbitrations. And we were entertained by an outstanding presentation by FBI Special Agent David Chaves, describing how he orchestrated stings leading to arrests for insider trading in the hedge fund industry, and a guest presentation by key informant “Tipper X” (Tom Hardin).

Those in attendance also witnessed SER’s Inaugural Testifying Contest. Five experienced members courageously volunteered to compete. Each was given a hypothetical case to examine and an opportunity to submit opinions and analysis in advance. For the contest, each was required to give direct and cross-examination testimony under the questioning of luminary securities attorneys David Robbins and Seth Lipner, and the gavel of sole arbitrator and SER member Ross Tulman. The judges for the contest carefully considered the content, style and delivery of each contestant. The winner of SER’s Inaugural Annual Testifying Contest was Mike Loconte, who earned the admiration of his peers and a year’s complimentary membership to SER.

Our conference officially finished the way that we always do, with our member’s roundtable event where each participant has the opportunity to bring up a topic of interest or concern. Unofficially, however, the conference continued into the evening with a networking dinner. Our private dining room was packed, with everyone enjoying their fill of New York’s best Italian food and the joy of good company.

As lasting tokens of our attendance, we took home high quality SER lapel pins and complimentary headshot photos. I was so pleased to learn that increasing numbers of our organization wear their lapel pins to hearings, and I am happy that so many of us now have improved headshots to use. Already, I see that I am not alone in using the headshots from the conference to update my profile on the SER website and social media sites.

Those of you who have worked on a conference before well recognize the value of speakers and organizers. I can assure all that the success of our sessions this year was the product of the generous and enthusiastic contributions of our speakers. You may have also noticed a continued trend in the growing professionalism and overall quality of the production of our conferences. These are the fruits of Patti Koetting’s tireless dedication and efforts. They all deserve my heartfelt thanks. 

Respectfully, Jeffery Schaff, President

 Click here to log in and access this year’s Event Guide and conference materials. Once logged in, use the Member Tools menu in the upper right hand corner to enter the Library and click on Past Conference and Annual Meeting Materials.

LinkedIN

Last month, we established a social media presence through a LinkedIN page.  We are already up to 58 followers, approximately two-thirds of whom are SER members and one-third are non-members (primarily securities attorneys). We used the LinkedIN page to create a newsfeed of our annual conference, issuing a separate announcement for each session. The statistics on those eleven postings are encouraging, with an average of 1,314 impressions (number of times that the announcement was shown to LinkedIN users), 15 clicks (clicks on content, name or logo) and 9 interactions (likes, comments and shares).

·        Click here to visit our page on LinkedIN, and to read all of our postings thus far.

Website Statistics

Survey Link

If you have not done so already, please click here to complete this year's ANNUAL CONFERENCE FEEDBACK SURVEY. 
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