Federal Reserve Governor Daniel K. Tarullo gave a speech discussing regulatory efforts to promote financial stability, including efforts to address the "too-big-to-fail" problem and systemic risk generally. Governor Tarullo noted that the existing regulatory response has been extensive, citing ongoing efforts such as the Basel III rulemaking, the Section 165 prudential regulation of large bank holding companies, and the implementation of Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act as examples. Nevertheless, Governor Tarullo stated that current efforts do not adequately address all of the vulnerabilities

FINRA announced that it has fined three firms a total of $900,000 for failing to establish and implement adequate anti-money laundering ("AML") programs and other supervisory systems to detect suspicious transactions. FINRA also fined and suspended four individuals, including two compliance officers. & One firm failed to perform any additional scrutiny of accounts that were related to a prior finding of misconduct. FINRA also found that certain customers' accounts engaged in a pattern of activity consisting of moving millions of dollars through the accounts while conducting minimal to no

The CFTC filed an amended Complaint in its pending enforcement action (see: U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. William Byrnes, et al.) naming Ron Eibschutz as a Defendant in its ongoing case against the New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. and two former CME NYMEX employees. The amended Complaint charges CME NYMEX, Byrnes, and Curtin with making repeated disclosures during a two and a half year period of material nonpublic customer information to Eibschutz, an outside commodity broker who was not authorized to receive the information. Eibschutz is charged with aiding and abetting the

The Depository Trust Clearing Corporation ("DTCC") filed suit against the CFTC for its approval of CME Rule 1001, and its implicit approval of a similar rule by ICE, that allows those clearing houses to report data on cleared swaps to affiliated swap data repositories. DTCC argues that the CME-ICE rules are anticompetitive tying arrangements that violate Parts 45 and 49 of the CFTC rules. "The commission failed to properly consider the anticompetitive effects of (the rules), and did not comply with the legally required administrative or cost-benefit analysis procedures," DTCC said in a

Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) made a statement to the effect that the House Financial Services Committee would be considering (i) six bills to amend the derivates portions of Dodd-Frank, (ii) two bills requiring the SEC to implement the JOBS Act yesterday and also providing that savings and loans should be treated in the same manner as banks under the JOBS Act and (iii) one bill requiring the SEC to conduct cost-benefit analyses of new regulations. View statement in full here (links externally to Financial Services website). Related News Item: Financial Services