SEC Division of Economic and Risk Analysis Deputy Director Dr. Scott W. Bauguess will leave the agency. According to the SEC, Dr. Bauguess played a critical role in the SEC's regulatory impact analyses and market risk assessment projects. For the past eleven years, Dr. Bauguess led the economic analyses of rules implementing provisions of the JOBS Act and parts of the Dodd-Frank Act, among other things. Prior to joining the SEC, Dr. Bauguess was a finance faculty member of the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University.

FINRA provided broker-dealers with a one-day extension for making Reserve Bank Account deposits, as required under Exchange Act Rule 15c3-3, in order to accommodate the Christmas and New Year holidays. As a result of the extension, broker-dealers will be permitted to make Reserve Bank Account deposits by December 27, 2018 for the week ending on December 21, 2018, and by January 3, 2019 for the week ending December 28, 2018.

The FDIC introduced proposed revisions to the FDIC's requirements for stress testing of FDIC-supervised institutions, consistent with changes made by Section 401 of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act. In particular, the proposed rule would: amend the FDIC's existing stress testing regulations to increase the minimum threshold for applicability from $10 billion to $250 billion ( i.e., by eliminating two subcategories under the definition of "covered bank" and revising "covered bank" to mean a state nonmember bank or state savings association with average total

ISDA urged the European Commission ("Commission") and the European Securities Authorities ("ESA") to extend certain derogations relating to clearing and margin. ISDA said the derogations remain valid and have yet to be addressed. In a letter to the Commission and ESA, ISDA lauded the European Securities and Markets Authority's Final Report, which proposed an extension until December 21, 2020 of the equivalent derogations under the separate clearing regulatory technical standards ("RTS"). ISDA also urged the Commission and the ESA to extend a time-limited derogation under Article 38 of the

FINRA Executive Vice President Richard W. Berry highlighted steps the organization is taking to address unpaid awards. Following critical statements by SEC Chair Jay Clayton and SEC Commissioner Kara M. Stein as to the difficulties that investors have in collecting arbitration awards, Mr. Berry said that FINRA's primary role with regard to arbitration is to administer cases. He acknowledged that roughly a third of the awards go unpaid. According to Mr. Berry, FINRA is taking a variety of steps to confront unpaid awards, including: implementing regulatory measures to pinpoint and remove bad