Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) reintroduced S.530, a bill that would require the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to be appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The bill has been referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. S ee: S.530; Senator Reed's Press Release.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System extended the comment period on its proposed rule to implement capital surcharges for the largest and most systemically important U.S. bank holding companies. Comments are now due by April 3, 2015. Related news: FRB Proposes Rules to Increase Capital Positions of Largest U.S. Bank Holding Companies (with Lofchie Comment) (December 9, 2014).

In Pilgrim's Pride Corp. v. Commissioner, No. 14-60295 (5th Cir. 2015), the Fifth Circuit held that section 1234A(1) of the Internal Revenue Code (the "Code") does not apply when a taxpayer abandons a capital asset. In Pilgrim's Pride, a predecessor to the taxpayer had been unable to negotiate the redemption of securities with the issuer and decided to abandon the securities without consideration. By doing so, the taxpayer generated a $98.6 million ordinary tax loss and more than $20 million in tax savings. The IRS asserted, and the tax court agreed, that section 1234A(1) of the Code applied

The European Securities Markets Authorities ("ESMA") published a peer review report on best execution under MiFID. The report found that the implementation level of best-execution provisions and of convergence of supervisory practices by national competent authorities ("NCAs") was "relatively low." ESMA called on NCAs to streamline their oversight of investment firms' application of best-execution rules for client trades by making a number of improvements, including the following: prioritizing best execution as a key business conduct requirement; allocating sufficient resources to supervise

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures ("CPMI") and IOSCO published three reports on the European Union, Japan and the United States' progress in implementing the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures ("PFMI"). T he reports focus on the implementation of the PFMI for central counterparties ("CCPs") and trade repositories ("TRs") in the three jurisdictions. Each assessment reflects the status of the jurisdiction's legal, regulatory and oversight frameworks as of April 18, 2014. Overall, the reports showed that the three jurisdictions have made "good progress" in