Current Issues in Investor Protection


SURVEY

CURRENT ISSUES IN INVESTOR
PROTECTION

In 2002, the editors of the Columbia Business Law Review
inaugurated the annual Survey, which they intended to
serve as a compendium of articles discussing various facets
of a single topic in business law. Having already addressed
topics such as bankruptcy, "going private" transactions, and
the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Survey celebrates its fifth
anniversary with two articles regarding the broad concern of
investor protection.

The first of these articles, entitled, Do You Get What You
Pay For? A Look at the High Fees and Low Protections of
Mutual Funds, considers the excessive fees that some
mutual funds charge and the legal remedies available to
shareholders who wish to combat them. After evaluating the
protections that the Investment Companies Act of 1940
affords mutual fund investors, the article discusses the
prospects for alternative modes of regulation, from the
potential imposition of fee caps and greater disclosure
requirements by the Securities and Exchange Commission
("SEC"), to self-regulation by the mutual fund industry.

As the title of the second article indicates, Dr. Spitzlove
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
"Balkanization" offers an account of the development of the
"balkanization" phenomenon, by which state attorneys
general (most notably New York Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer) and other state officials allegedly have encroached
upon the domain of the SEC to police the securities markets.
The article discounts the fears of regulatory balkanization
that Attorney General Spitzer's critics have raised, and
argues that the possibility of administrative preemption by
the SEC of state securities regulation effectively checks state
attorneys general from pursuing enforcement actions that
would harm the capital markets and the investing public.



280 COLUMBIA BUSINESS L4 W REVIEW [Vol. 2006

The Columbia Business Law Review hopes that academics
and practitioners alike find the information in this year's
Survey useful. As the Review embarks upon the next five
years of the Survey, the editors welcome its readers'
comments, as well as suggestions of new topical areas for
consideration.

Caroline J. Dillon
Johnathan Mathiesen
Survey Authors

Craig R. Bucki
Survey Editor