North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) President and Arkansas Securities Commissioner Heath Abshure participated in a news teleconference to discuss the proposed rule with representatives from the AARP, AFL-CIO, Consumer Federation of America, and Americans for Financial Reform. Discussed in the teleconference was the role of NASAA members and the JOBS Act provision, which requires the SEC to amend its Rule 506 to eliminate a ban on the general advertising of private securities offerings. Commissioner Abshure criticized the SEC for abdicating its responsibilities in

IOSCO released the final report Policy Recommendations for Money Market Funds in which proposes recommendations - for the regulation of Money Market Funds ("MMFs") throughout the world. The report contained 15 major recommendations (at page 19) the most important of which are summarized below: Limits on the assets in which they invest and the risks they take Limits on use of repo Must use fair value accounting Must disclose to investors the possibility of principal loss Additional requirements should apply to funds that have a "stable" market value; e.g. funds that price at a buck Funds should

The CFTC announced that Farr Financial has agreed to pay a $280,000 civil monetary penalty to settle charges that it failed to properly invest customer segregated funds, and failed to diligently supervise those investment activities. View order here (links externally to CFTC website). See also: CFTC Press Release.

CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler made a speech proclaiming "the new era of transparency and commonsense rules of the road for the swaps market." Chairman Gensler discusses several steps that will be taken to further the swaps market reform structure. He argues that the foundation for transparency and lowered risk of the swaps market has finally been laid. For instance, real-time public reporting and reporting to swap data repositories (SDRs) of interest rate and credit default swap (CDS) indices will be achieved by the New Year. Swap dealers will also begin the process of registering and come under

The Dodd-Frank Act requires the Federal Reserve Board to issue regulations that require financial companies with total consolidated assets of more than $10 billion, and for which the Board is the primary federal financial regulatory agency, to conduct stress tests on an annual basis. The Board is adopting this final rule to implement the company-run stress test requirements in section 165(i)(2) of the Dodd-Frank Act regarding company-run stress tests for bank holding companies with total consolidated assets greater than $10 billion but less than $50 billion and state member banks and savings