SEC

Congressional legislation aimed at encouraging the formation of new companies could revive the bad old days that preceded the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the 1990s, according to one commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) .

The disclosure guidance on cybersecurity issued last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Corporation Finance is a "game-changer," says Alan Paller, director of research with SANS Institute, a security research and education organization. But not because the rules are now different. In fact, they're not. Rather, what's significantly new is the way the existing rules are perceived.

Consumer advocates as well as many business groups have attempted to get federal laws adopted in the United States that would mandate disclosure of security breaches in which some types of private information about identifiable people are exposed. In spite of the obvious logic of having a national standard, these efforts so far have failed.

This is not the kind of week Yahoo needed to re-instill investor confidence.

We may soon be able to read the infamous letter sent to Hewlett-Packard's board of directors that got former CEO Mark Hurd fired. And according to Business Insider, a person who has read the eight-page document from attorney Gloria Allred says, "It will burn your eyeballs."

The Securities and Exchange Commission is widening an investigation into the hot secondary market for shares of private companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Zynga. From the Wall Street Journal:

An investment fund that hid flaws in a computer application that set the fund's strategy for making trades has agreed to pay a $25 million SEC fine and pay back $217 million in losses suffered by investors because of the problem.

First, a prediction: All of this -- the external probe and the shareholder lawsuit -- will come to nothing. Perhaps some kind of settlement. But there'll be no real winners, except for the lawyers.

Goldman Sachs thinks securities regulations are for losers, wimps and socialists.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article about the growing market for "shares" of private tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an information investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mark Hurd's departure from Hewlett-Packard, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.