SEC Chairman Mary Jo White delivered a testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services on behalf of the Commission regarding the recent activities of the SEC. In her testimony, which provides a fairly comprehensive description of the SEC's principal agenda items, Chairman White highlighted the work of each of the Divisions and Offices, including: Enforcement (she emphasized money collections, financial crisis cases, cases against markets and broker-dealers, insider trading, cases having a cross-border element "particularly in China", the publication of a

The CFTC held a public meeting today to consider the pre-trade transparency module that includes the swaps block rule, the swap execution facility rule and the made available to trade rule. Opening statements were made by Chairman Gary Gensler, Commissioners Jill Sommers, Bart Chilton, Scott D. O'Malia and Mark Wetjen discussing key aspects of the rules and their impact on the swaps market. The commissioners focused on both the benefits and shortcomings which they viewed as critical to the success of the reforms. Chairman Gensler Delivers Overview of New Rules and Their Promotion of

The CFTC approved three final rules regarding (i) core principles and other requirements for swap execution facilities; (ii) the process for a designated contract market or swap execution facility to make a swap available to trade; and (iii) procedures to establish appropriate minimum block sizes for large notional off-facility swaps and block trades. Although the text of the Final Rules is not yet available, the summary below is based primarily on the fact sheets issued by the CFTC and the discussions at the CFTC Open Meeting. SEF Final Rules By a vote of 4-1, the CFTC approved final rules

FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg spoke at the Exchequer Club in Washington, DC on May 15, 2013, giving a brief overview of the current state of the banking industry and the progress made by the FDIC in its Community Banking Initiative. He also addressed the FDIC's efforts to implement its authority to resolve systemically important financial institutions, particularly with respect to the FDIC's international coordination on resolution planning efforts. View remarks in full here (links externally to FDIC website).

The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a hearing focusing on "Too Big to Fail." Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) said the following at the hearing: "The fact is that Dodd-Frank did not end ‘Too Big to Fail,’ but instead enshrined it. Title II of Dodd-Frank, which created the Orderly Liquidation Authority, made government guarantees for systemically important financial institutions explicit . . . and it is this explicit guarantee that not only provides an unfair advantage to the biggest and most powerful companies and institutions, but in