A former managing director of a bank agreed to pay $350,000 to settle CFTC charges for illegally "mismarking" swap valuations in an effort to hide significant trading losses. According to the CFTC Order, the former managing director mismarked the valuations of swap instruments in an attempt to cover up significant trading losses incurred by entering false "end-of-day" marks into an internal bank spreadsheet utilized for internal asset valuations. In connection with this action, the CFTC Division of Enforcement closed its investigation. The CFTC noted that its decision to terminate the

The National Futures Association ("NFA") listed the nominees for the open positions on the NFA Board of Directors. In addition, the NFA identified the nominee for the one open position on the NFA's 2019 Nominating Committee.

FINRA will update the FOCUS filing system for broker-dealers to comply with the SEC's recently adopted amendments to disclosure requirements for SEC-regulated entities. As previously covered, the SEC's adopted amendments were part of an effort to (i) reduce regulatory burden, (ii) align regulations with recent changes in U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("U.S. GAAP"), and (iii) implement the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. The updates will include revising the FOCUS reports to reflect updated U.S. GAAP requirements, including revising the Statement of Financial

A broker-dealer and an affiliated FinTech firm agreed to pay $12 million to settle SEC charges in connection with a dark pool operation. According to the SEC Order, ITG Inc. and Alternet Securities Inc. (collectively, the "Respondents") made materially misleading statements and omissions to subscribers, improperly disclosed confidential information of subscribers, failed to establish adequate safeguards and policies to protect the confidential trading information of subscribers to an alternative trading system ("ATS") and failed to make adequate disclosures in its Form ATS filings. In

The SEC updated Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations ("C&DIs") related to Regulation S-K and several rules and forms under the Exchange Act. Regarding Regulation S-K, the SEC staff advised that, under certain circumstances, a company can be an "accelerated filer" and a "smaller reporting company" at the same time ( see Question 102.01). The SEC staff noted that if a reporting company determines that it does not qualify as a smaller reporting company for a particular year, the company will be able to qualify when making a subsequent annual determination if its public float or annual