Regulation

Three of the U.S. largest trade groups representing the derivatives industry have said to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it needs to be a lot more lenient on how it will monitor market manipulation when it implements its greater authority under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation.

UBS Financial Services Inc. is on the hook to pay $2.2 million in the largest settlement to date related to Lehman Brothers-associated investment products it once sold.

2011 will be critical as regulators across the globe start the difficult task of implementing the new Basel III rules even while they tackle issues left unfinished by the agreement.

Just three years ago, the very idea of a consumer protection agency was dismissed by most bankers and industry representatives as a pipe dream. But after a brutal legislative fight this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may prove to be the most important agency to watch in 2011.

Opposing advocacy groups have unleashed new demands on the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent weeks, urging the agency to pay more attention to potential problems associated with new whistleblower rules.

One of the chief goals of the Dodd-Frank Act was to end the notion of "too big to fail," but months after the law's enactment, a debate persists over whether that goal will be met.

Deciding which financial firms beyond banks are systemically important is one of the biggest decisions still to be made by regulators under the Dodd-Frank Act.

Opposing advocacy groups complain that new whistleblower rules could allow too much internal corporate interference or provide whistleblowers with too much financial incentive.

New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo filed a lawsuit against Ernst & Young LLP charging the accounting firm with helping Lehman Brothers Holdings engage in an accounting fraud masking the true state of its balance sheet.

The company said it has already taken appropriate provision for the fine, so payment won't affect current income.