Regulation

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary L. Schapiro will step down on Dec. 14, the commission announced Monday.

UBS AG was fined 29.7 million pounds ($47.6 million) by the U.K. and told by the Swiss that it may have to increase capital levels for operational risks as regulators levied penalties after Kweku Adoboli’s $2.3 billion trading loss.

SAC Capital Advisors LP is seeking to calm investor concern about founder Steven A. Cohen’s trading in two drug stocks and possible regulatory sanctions after prosecutors for the first time tied Cohen to a specific transaction at the center of an insider-trading investigation.

Morgan Keegan & Co. is going to trial before a judge whose decision to throw out regulators’ claims the retail brokerage misled thousands of investors about the risks of auction-rate securities was reversed on appeal.

Nationwide Funds Group has merged the UBS High Yield Fund and UBS Global Equity Fund into the Nationwide High Yield Bond Fund and the Nationwide Global Equity Fund, giving Nationwide some $183 million in new assets

President Barack Obama has been re-elected. Is there portent for the mutual fund and exchange-traded fund industry?

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Tuesday said the Fed cannot single-handedly neutralize the impact of the so-called fiscal cliff that the economy may tumble over come January 1.

Now that President Obama has been re-elected, Wall Street is weary of the future. How will the financial sector respond? When will it fully recover? Will the election results embolden regulators and inspire a greater degree of oversight? Will the President introduce new forms of regulation?

“I’m more optimistic by everything I’ve read,” Moynihan said today in London during a Bloomberg Television interview. Lawmakers are taking the matter “very seriously,” he said.

Treasuries fell, following a four- week gain, after President Barack Obama said he was confident the U.S. will avoid the automatic spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to occur at year-end.