The Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight provided no-action relief to various general partners and a managing member of commodity pools from registering as a CPO under Section 4m(1) of the Commodity Exchange Act, and allowed an affiliated CPO ("designee") to serve as the CPO of the pools instead, where, among other things: (1) the general partners or managing member (hereinafter "general partners") and the designee are under common ownership and control; (2) the general partners have delegated all of their management authority to the designee; (3) the general partners do not

National Futures Association ("NFA") took an emergency enforcement action against Light Tower Investments, Inc. (LTI), an NFA Member commodity pool operator (CPO) and commodity trading advisor (CTA) located in Escondido, California, and Klaus P. Weyers (Weyers), a principal and associated person (AP) of LTI. Specifically, NFA believes that LTI was operating a commodity pool – LTI Capital – although LTI and Weyers failed to list the pool with NFA or submit a Pool Disclosure Document to NFA for review and acceptance, or file an exemption from CFTC registration. In addition, NFA believes that LTI

President Barack Obama nominated two U.S. Senate aides to serve as members of the SEC. Kara Stein, an aide to Rhode Island Democratic Senator Jack Reed, would replace SEC Democratic Commissioner Elisse Walter. Michael Piwowar, an economist who works for the Senate Banking Committee, would replace SEC Republican Commissioner Troy Paredes. See : Press Release - Crapo Commends Nomination of Chief Economist Mike Piwowar to SEC.

FINRA is filing with the SEC a proposed rule change to amend the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine ("TRACE") dissemination protocols to provide a limited exception to dissemination requirements for certain Agency Pass-Through Mortgage-Backed Securities ("MBS") and Asset-Backed Securities ("ABS") backed by loans guaranteed as to principal and interest by the Small Business Administration ("SBA-Backed ABS"). See : Proposed Rule Change.

The European Commission published a staff working document ("SWD") on February 14, 2013, on the proposed financial transaction tax ("FTT"). See: Analysis of European Commission staff working document on the proposed Financial Transaction Tax.