Regulation

FINRA fined Jefferies & Co. $1.5 million, ordered the investment bank to repay $425,000 in ill-gotten commissions and fees and suspended a pair of its brokers for failing to disclose additional compensation to institutional clients and other conflicts of interest related to shady sales of auction rate securities between August 2007 and March 2008.

President Obama announced the framework of a plan Wednesday to shrink the deficit $4 trillion over 12 years, and urged House and Senate leaders to appoint teams to negotiate a final bipartisan plan by the end of June.

Success of the Office of Financial Research is critical to curbing TBTF, and if it flops, the next set of solutions may be much harsher than living wills and orderly liquidation authority.

They love him. They loathe him. The Great Recession is over. There's still no sign of the recession's end. Things are only getting better. Things couldn't get worse. That basically sums up the mixed sentiment of most of the financial advisors polled earlier this year by investment management firm Brinker Capital to get a sense of how they feel President Obama and his administration navigated and managed -- or not -- the U.S. economy and government fiscal policy last year and what to expect in 2011.

Wells had sought $36 million from Stifel Nicolaus for the case of improper recruiting.

A FINRA arbitration panel has ordered Citigroup Global Markets to pay $54 million in compensatory and punitive damages to investors in its municipal arbitrage trust funds.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission said they will hold a two-day roundtable at the start of May to help set dates for implementing final rules governing the establishment of new markets for trading credit default and other types of swaps of financial risks.

Independent financial advisers blasted the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board for its draft muni-adviser fiduciary duty rule, saying it targeted independent FAs while virtually exempting underwriters, some of which market themselves as advisers.

Following the extended failure wave and deficit in federal reserves, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sounded decidedly more hopeful Tuesday about its future.

Until the Investment Adviser Registration Depository is adapted to handle the influx of advisors converting to state registration, not much will get done.