The CFTC announced the filing of a civil complaint in federal district court charging Intrade The Prediction Market Limited ("Intrade") and Trade Exchange Network Limited ("TEN"), both of which are based in Dublin, Ireland, with offering commodity option contracts to U.S. customers for trading, as well as soliciting, accepting, and confirming the execution of orders from U.S. customers in violation of the CFTC's ban on off-exchange options trading. The complaint also alleges that TEN violated an order issued by the CFTC in 2005 that found that TEN had previously engaged in similar conduct and

The table below indicates the participants and subjects of the meetings, many dealing with SEF Registration, for November 21, 2012. Click on the links below for more information. MEETING WITH RULEMAKING Goldman Sachs SEF Registration Direct Energy General UBS SEF Registration Javelin General Eris Exchange General American Gas AssociationNorthwest Natural Gas CompanyAtmos Energy CompanyMidAmerican Energy CompanyNational Fuel Gas Distribution Company General Ed Rosen General UBS General ICE General Bloomberg SEF Registration Barclays SEF Registration Tradeweb SEF Registration ISDA General

The CFTC announced the filing and simultaneous settlement of charges against a registered FCM for failing to maintain sufficient funds in its customer segregation account for a period of three days, for failing to provide the CFTC timely notice of its under-segregation, and for related supervisory failures. The Order imposes a $700,000 civil monetary penalty and a cease and desist order on the firm, and requires the firm to undertake certain improvements to its internal controls to prevent future under-segregation violations and notification failures. View Order in full here (links externally

The CFTC Division of Clearing and Risk issued a no-action letter under CFTC Rule 1.25 (Investment of Customer Funds). In the letter, the Division confirmed that it did not object to the FCM's entering into repurchase and reverse repurchase transactions (collectively, "repos") under CFTC Rule 1.25 where the counterparty to the repo is an SEC-registered clearing agency. Cross-Reference(s): CFTC Rule 1.25(d)(2) [Investment of Customer Funds] Lofchie Comment: Essentially, the no-action corrects what I assume was an inadvertent omission in Rule 1.25, which is the omission of registered clearing

The SEC announced that on July 31, 2012, following a two week trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, a jury found that former Citigroup Global Markets Inc. employee Brian H. Stoker was not liable for violations of the Federal securities laws related to the issuance of a $1 billion collateralized debt obligation (CDO) called Class V Funding III. The SEC originally filed its suit against Stoker on October 19, 2011. The SEC alleged that Citigroup structured and marketed Class V III and exercised significant influence over the selection of $500 million of