The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ("FRB") approved a final rule titled Prohibition Against Federal Assistance to Swaps Entities ("Regulation KK"), which clarifies the treatment of uninsured U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks under Dodd-Frank Section 716, commonly known as "Lincoln", or as the swaps push-out provision. The final rule adopts without change the interim final rule issued by the Board on June 5, 2013. Section 716 of Dodd-Frank generally prohibits the provision of certain types of federal assistance, such as discount window lending and deposit insurance

SIFMA issued its 2014 and 2015 recommended holiday schedules for full and early market closes for the trading of U.S. dollar-denominated fixed-income securities in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. SIFMA recommended early and full market closes, yet stated that each member firm should decide for itself whether its fixed-income departments remain open for trading. The recommendations apply to trading of U.S. dollar-denominated government securities, mortgage- and asset-backed securities, over-the-counter investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds, municipal bonds, and

SIFMA Asset Management Group ("AMG") submitted comments to the European Commission ("EC") requesting a postponement of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation ("EMIR") reporting obligation to the buy-side. SIFMA AMG stated that it has substantial reservations regarding the operational feasibility for compliance from buy-side market participants, and explained that applying the Reporting Obligations to buy-side market participants before they have time to prepare may result in inaccurate reporting, which would impede the goal of creating a clear overview of the derivatives market

The Asset Management Group of SIFMA ("SIFMA AMG") and ISDA submitted comments to the CFTC requesting that the CFTC extend the comment period for the Aggregation Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in order to align it with the end of the comment period for the proposed rule regarding Position Limits for Derivatives. According to the comment letter, the two proposed rules were considered and adopted at the same CFTC public meeting on November 5, 2013. Therefore, the proposed rules are "deeply intertwined," and the agencies believe it is "essential to have sufficient time to review and comment on them

SEC approved FINRA amendments to Supplementary Material .02 to FINRA Rule 5131 ("New Issue Allocations and Distributions"), which is intended to prevent "spinning." The rule amendment permits firms to rely upon written representation from certain unaffiliated private funds when allocating shares of a new issue. The Managed Funds Association ("MFA") had previously submitted comments to the SEC in support of FINRA's proposed amendments. According to the recent MFA comment letter on FINRA's amendments to Rule 5131, there is a reduced risk of spinning through an investment in a hedge fund due to