Regulation

The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued an Investor Bulletin to help purchasers of municipal bonds better assess the bonds’ credit risks.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has ordered five firms to pay $4.48 million for unfairly using bond proceeds to pay reimburse themselves for membership fees they paid to the California Public Securities Association, a lobbying group.

The Investment Company Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today filed a notice of appeal of a recent ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upholding the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s rule requiring mutual funds with commodities investments to register with the agency.

Trades were placed one to two days after the orders arrived by fax or mail, causing some customers to get inferior prices from late 2003 until June 2011, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said in a statement.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has ordered Pruco Securities, a securities broker-dealer owned by Prudential Financial, to pay more than $10.7 million to customers who placed mutual fund orders via facsimile or mail and received an inferior price for their shares.

So what are three elements that are going to shape the mutual fund landscape in 2013?

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.