The SEC's approval of the MSRB proposal to amend Rules G-1, G-2, G-3 and D-13 to establish professional qualification requirements for municipal advisors was published in the Federal Register. The rule change, which was modified by two amendments based on comment letters since the original filing, establishes two new registration classes for municipal advisors, and requires a municipal advisor to be qualified in accordance with MSRB rules before engaging in municipal advisory activities. The amendments will become effective on April 27, 2015, but interested persons may comment on the rule

The SEC's approval of FINRA's revisions to the definitions of "non-public" and "public" arbitrator was published in the Federal Register. FINRA proposed to delete and replace the two definitions in FINRA Rule 12100 of the Customer Code and FINRA Rule 13100 of the Industry Code. New Rule 12100 of the Customer Code broadens the application of the current Rule 12100 by (i) increasing the look-back period from two years to five years, (ii) making the rule apply not only to services provided to specified financial industry entities, but also to services provided to any persons or entities

The SEC charged the brokerage firm H.D. Vest with violating customer protection rules after failing to adequately supervise registered representatives who misappropriated customer funds. According to the SEC order, H.D. Vest, which has more than 4,500 registered representatives working typically as independent contractors who also operate tax businesses outside of their securities businesses, failed to have proper policies and procedures in place to monitor its representatives' outside business activities. The SEC found that, as a result of this failure, some representatives used their outside

The Office of Financial Research issued a working paper examining whether the stress test results of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ("FRB") have become more predictable and "arguably less informative." According to the working paper, projected losses in the 2013 and 2014 stress tests "are nearly perfectly correlated for bank holding companies that participated in both rounds." The paper compares projected losses across different scenarios used in the 2014 stress test, and finds "surprisingly high" correlations for outcomes grouped by bank or by loan category, which

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") issued an order approving Algonquin Gas Transmission LLC's proposal to construct and operate its Algonquin Incremental Market Project in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. FERC also approved Algonquin's requests to abandon a meter and regulating station in New London County, Connecticut, which will be replaced as part of the project, and to remove and replace certain aboveground facilities. See: FERC Order.