Regulation

The Securities and Exchange Commission last week barred an Arizona-based mutual fund manager from the securities industry for failing to follow his own prospectus, which led to his fund’s collapse.

After the landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and continued calls for tighter scrutiny of the financial sector, 2012 brought a flurry of congressional hearings, public comments on rule proposals, and lobbying and public posturing by various stakeholders. Scores of new rules and regulations that could affect the advisory industry made their way through varying stages of development. But for all the noise this year, what actually changed?

President Obama, facing a budget stalemate with Republicans, urged leaders of both parties to assemble an interim bill to keep taxes from rising on middle- income Americans as they work on a more comprehensive plan.

Robert Khuzami, who led the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division’s pursuit of financial industry wrongdoing related to the subprime crisis, plans to step down as early as next month, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

President Obama is urging lawmakers to put together a package to avoid the fiscal cliff with the next 10 days.

Another former aide to Mary Schapiro takes up a new leadership role at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass," Boehner said in a statement after Republicans broke from a conference where leaders made a last-minute appeal for votes.

Ahead of two votes in the House of Representatives on Republican-backed spending and tax bills, Senate Democrats ripped into House Speaker John Boehner's so-called "Plan B," calling the proposals to avoid going over the fiscal cliff a "nonstarter" in the upper chamber and deepening the partisan impasse ahead of a year-end deadline to avert a series of automatic tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts.

The Clearing House spent 10 months and $2 million to plan a simulation of a large bank failure — and the results are not only fascinating, they're exemplary.

SEC Chairman Elisse Walter may hire as her top lawyer a former enforcement director from the main U.S. derivatives regulator.