The SEC Division of Investment Management ("IM") issued a guidance regarding the application of the exemption from investment adviser registration available to an investment adviser that advises solely on one or more "venture capital funds," as defined in Advisers Act Rule 203(l)-1 ("Venture Capital Fund Defined"). The guidance provides five scenarios which the SEC states are illustrative of the inquiries which the Division of IM has received regarding the venture capital exemption ("VC Exemption"). The Division's responses to the scenarios include the following: The Division would not object

The SEC has charged a Miami-based trader with insider trading in the stock of a company that had given him confidential notice of a planned distribution of its shares, as well as short sales and related covering transactions that violated Regulation M in connection with public offerings by several other companies. See: SEC Complaint against Langston; SEC Press Release. Related news: SEC Settles with Numerous Firms for Covering Shorts out of a Public Offering in Violation of Regulation M (September 17, 2013). See also: For a discussion of the application of Rule 105 of Regulation M to hedge

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law held a hearing titled "The Bankruptcy Code and Financial Institution Insolvencies." The hearing focused on examining the current Bankruptcy code and whether it is equipped to address the insolvency of large and small financial institutions. The following witnesses testified: The Honorable Jeffery Lacker, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (written testimony); Mr. Donald S. Bernstein, Co-Chair of the Insolvency and Restructuring Group, Davis Polk Wardwell LLP (written testimony); and Professor Mark J

According to an MFA Blog post, the implementation of an EU plan to tax a broad range of financial transactions is likely to be delayed. Under the European Commission's proposal, a 0.1% tax would apply to share and bond trades and 0.01% to derivative transactions between financial institutions, if at least one party is located in the EU. According to the European Commission, the tax, which would impose a levy on stock, bond, and derivative trades, was originally supposed to be implemented on January 1st. However, officials indicated that, without a compromise between the countries that might

Javelin SEF announced that it has amended and limited its "made available to trade" ("MAT") submission with respect to interest rate swaps to the CFTC. A swap that is made available to trade must be traded on a CFTC-regulated futures exchange or swap execution facility. Javelin's original submission, which was criticized for being too broad, initially covered all interest rate swap tenors from one month to 51 years in U.S. dollar, sterling and euro currencies. The updated MAT determination only includes benchmark dollar and euro swaps, along with certain international monetary market ("IMM")