The SEC announced a $3 million dollar whistleblower award to a company insider whose information helped the SEC "crack a complex fraud." According to the SEC, this payout is the third highest award to date under the SEC's Whistleblower program. Since its inception, the SEC "has paid more than $50 million to 18 whistleblowers." Approximately $47 million of the payments have been made to just three of the whistleblowers, including this one. See: SEC Press Release. See also: Exchange Act Rule 21-F.

The SEC announced the promotion of Michele Anderson to the position of Associate Director in the Division of Corporate Finance. Ms. Anderson will begin her new role later this month. See: SEC Press Release.

The MSRB issued a regulatory notice requesting comment on a proposal to establish a historical data product to provide institutions of higher education with post-trade municipal securities transaction data collected through the MSRB's Real-time Transaction Reporting System ("RTRS"). The RTRS Academic Data Product would allow academic researchers to distinguish transactions executed by a particular firm. Comments must be submitted by September 14, 2015. Lofchie Comment: It seems a great idea for the regulators to attempt to benefit from academic expertise, particularly expertise in dealing with

FINRA solicited comment on a proposal to create a new academic Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine reg; ("TRACE") data set that would include masked market participant identifiers. The TRACE data product would only be available to academics from an institution of higher education, would enable researchers to track activity by individual dealers or groups of dealers and would allow academics to observe dealers' behaviors with measures such as intermediation costs, dealer participation and liquidity. Comments must be submitted by September 14, 2015. See:FINRA Reg. Notice 15-26; FINRA Press

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ("FRB") proposed a modification of its capital planning and stress testing regulations for large bank holding companies and certain other banks that have more than $10 billion in consolidated assets. If adopted, the changes would begin with the 2016 capital plan and stress testing cycles. Comments on the proposed rulemaking must be submitted by September 24, 2015.