The CFTC Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight granted exemptive relief for the year 2015 to two commodity pool operators from the annual requirement that an independent public accountant audit a pool's financial statements.

In the latest installment of the Energy Metro Desk series "Drums along the Potomac," Editor-in-Chief John Sodergreen took exception to the recent CFTC authorization for the NFA to receive direct access to trade data maintained in the registered swap data repositories.

The SEC requested comment on a FINRA proposal requiring the associated persons of a broker-dealer to register as "Securities Traders" if those persons were primarily responsible for (i) the "design, development or significant modification of algorithmic trading strategies," or (ii) the day-to-day supervision or direction of such activities.

Several financial services associations submitted comments to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in response to a proposal to impose total loss-absorbing capacity, long-term debt and related "clean holding company" requirements on global systemically important banking groups.

The MSRB amended its rules to modernize the mathematical formula governing how broker-dealers calculate the dollar price of interest-bearing municipal securities with periodic interest payments that have more than six months to redemption.