The Treasury's Office of Financial Research, Chairman Matthew Reed, released material focusing on the benefits of legal entity identifiers ("LEIs") to financial market participants and government regulators worldwide. LEIs are expected to be adopted by all legal entities engaged in financial market transactions globally, and are expected to be valuable in regulatory reporting. The Treasury materials focus on certain LEI basics, explaining that an LEI is a 20-digit, alphanumeric code that connects to business information. This code, which conforms to specifications developed by the

New SRO rules and rule proposals have been announced by the SEC. Click on the links below to view the SEC's notice of each rule change and proposal. BATS: Effective Immediately - Rule Change Related to Fees for Use of BATS Exchange, Inc. (See also: Exhibit 5) BATS: Effective Immediately - Rule Change to Extend the Penny Pilot Program (See also: Exhibit 5) BOX: Effective Immediately - Rule Change to Extend the Penny Pilot Program and Amend Rule 7050 (See also: Exhibit 5) BYX: Effective Immediately - Rule Change Related to Fees for Use of BATS Y-Exchange, Inc. (See also: Exhibit 5) ISE: Proposed

The MSRB released new educational videos as a contribution to its "Investor Toolkit," which is an online resource for investors navigating the municipal securities market. The new educational videos are for municipal securities investors and explain what they should expect from their brokers when investing in the municipal securities market. The MSRB also provides educational resources for state and local governments that issue municipal securities in its State and Local Government Toolkit. See: MSRB Press Release to learn more.

The NFA release d a Notice to Members concerning the implementation of Phase 2 of Financial Requirements Section 4, which requires FCMs that hold customer segregated funds to instruct the depositories holding these funds to report the balances in these accounts on a daily basis. Under Financial Requirements Section 4, a depository must comply with this request in order to be considered an acceptable depository for customer segregated funds. CME Group has adopted similar requirements for its FCM clearing members. Phase 2 requires (i) clearing FCMs (including foreign brokers) that carry customer

The MFA released its June Policy Brief, focusing on important global hedge fund industry headlines, as well as recent MFA advocacy and education initiatives. This month's stories include: MFA's recommendations to the FSOC on the matter of strengthening protections for non-public, sensitive and proprietary information. MFA, FIA, SIFMA, AMG and ICI's joint comment letter to the CFTC seeking to extend the compliance time for the bunched order rule. A WSJ op-ed by Bob Rice on the performance of hedge funds. The introduction of "What is a Hedge Fund?" - the first of a series of videos geared toward