Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) wrote a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew in which she voiced her concern that the FSOC process for identifying and designating nonbank systemically important financial companies has "created needless uncertainty," and recommended that FSOC communicate sooner with companies under consideration. Representative Maloney made suggestions to improve the FSOC designation process that included the following: FSOC should provide notice to companies that have advanced to Stage 2 of the designation process, either affirmatively or upon request; FSOC

The MSRB issued a regulatory notice announcing that the SEC approved amendments to MSRB Rule G-3 on professional qualification requirements. In addition, related non-substantive changes were made to Rule G-7 ("Information Concerning Associated Persons") and Rule G-27 ("Supervision"). The amendments to Rule G-3(a), which will also affect Rules G-7 and G-27, include: limiting the scope of permitted activities for a limited representative investment company and variable contracts products to sales to, and purchases from, customers of municipal fund securities; eliminating the financial and

IOSCO announced that its Committee 7 on Commodity Derivatives (the "Committee") is researching the potential effects of storage infrastructure on the integrity of the price formation process of commodity derivatives in member jurisdictions. The first stage in the Committee's work has been to develop a questionnaire in order to gather information to inform its research. The questions are divided into a number of chapters focusing on different aspects of the storage infrastructure environment. The Committee hopes that the questionnaire will focus particularly on participants' views of perceived

SIFMA Asset Management Group ("AMG") submitted additional comments to the CFTC regarding its proposed rulemaking concerning the aggregation of positions. SIFMA AMG stated that it is submitting the comments to provide further detail on some of the questions that were raised during the Aggregation Panel Roundtable, and to recap the main concerns expressed in the initial comment letter from February 10, 2014. The SIFMA AMG letter reiterates that aggregation based on ownership rather than control is neither required nor authorized by the CEA, and recommends that the CFTC make the following changes

The SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy issued an Investor Alert to help investors identify potentially fraudulent unregistered offerings. The Investor Alert reminded investors that a company may not offer or sell securities unless the offering has been registered with the SEC or an exemption to registration is available. An unregistered offering, also known as a private placement, is not subject to some of the laws and regulations that are designed to protect investors, such as disclosure requirements that apply to registered offerings. The SEC advised that, because of the flexible