Chances are the SEC will take action on the soft dollar issue sometime in 2005, according to a Monday article in the Wall Street Journal. Soft dollar arrangements are a "front-burner issue," Paul Roye, director of the SEC's Division of Investment Management, commented at a conference on Friday.

Look for a narrower definition of what can be considered research. Roye said regulators were looking at a NASD soft dollar report "closely"; that report recommends that research include only "intellectual property."

Roye, who is rumored to be leaving the SEC, told the WSJ that news was "premature." 

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