U.S. District Judge William Pauley has dismissed the lawsuit brought against Siemens A.G. by a former compliance officer who claimed that Siemens' Chinese subsidiary used kickbacks to boost medical equipment sales, ruling that Dodd-Frank's anti-retaliation protections for whistleblowers do not apply outside the United States. Lofchie Comment : The judge takes a dim view of broad claims of the extra-territorial application of U.S. law, even in a situation in which the court accepts, for the sake of argument, an allegation of wrongdoing. This obviously has direct significance for whistleblowers

The National Futures Association ("NFA") issued a notice to AlphaMetrix LLC ("AlphaMetrix"), a registered CPO, CTA and NFA Member, that the NFA has taken Member Responsibility Action against AlphaMetrix for violations of Compliance Rule 2-45 ("Prohibition of Loans by Commodity Pools to CPOs and Affiliated Entities"). & According to the notice, the action is deemed necessary to protect AlphaMetrix's pool participants because AlphaMetrix withdrew management and incentive fees from its various pools that were earned and owed to third-party money managers. Despite AlphaMetrix's having fee rebate

The ERISA Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans has announced a public meeting scheduled for November 4 from 1-5 p.m. EST. The meeting will finalize recommendations that will be presented to the Secretary of Labor. Issues under consideration include: retirement plan communications; local missing and lost plan participants; private sector pension de-risking; and participant protection. See: ERISA Meeting Notice.

The CFTC is requesting public comment on a certification from trueEX, LLC ("trueEX") to implement available-to-trade determinations for certain interest rate swap contracts. trueEX submitted its available-to-trade determinations to the CFTC on a self-certified basis pursuant to CFTC Rules 37.10 ("Process for a swap execution facility to make a swap available to trade") and 40.6 ("Self-certification of rules"). According to the CFTC, if trueEX's submission is deemed certified by operation of Rule 40.6, such swap contracts, whether listed or offered by trueEX or any other designated contract

CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler spoke before the Americans for Financial Reform and Georgetown University Law Center's Financial Transparency Symposium, reviewing the steps that the government and the CFTC have taken to reform the swaps market. Chairman Gensler began with an overview of the debates that Congress and the Administration had when beginning to reform the market: which products to cover, which participants to cover, and what the cross-border scope of reform should be. According to Gensler, the scope of the current regulatory framework goes beyond swaps products that were most affected