Regulation

Senate Democrats tapped mostly liberal members Tuesday to be conferees on the regulatory reform bill, making it harder for the banking industry to remove provisions it considers too tough.

With the SEC money market fund rules taking effect this Friday and the Libor up sharply, fund managers are reportedly beginning to see lending to European banks as too much of a risk. The bigger worry is this pullback has the potential to lead to another credit crunch like the one that nearly crippled the capital markets in 2008.

Kenneth A. Johnson, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chief financial officer as of last Friday, takes over the agency’s financial operations just as the regulator prepares to amass a bigger operating budget and beef up examinations of mutual fund complexes and hedge funds to get ahead of systemic risk and ponzi schemes of the Madoff magnitude.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has censured and fined Piper Jaffray & Co. $700,000 for failing to retain about 4.3 million e-mails over a six-year period and for not alerting FINRA that it was having problems with its e-mail retention and retrieval.

Stevens says bank-like regulations could hurt mutual funds.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has censured and fined Piper ­Jaffray & Co. $700,000 for failing to retain about 4.3 million e-mails over a six-year period and for not alerting FINRA that it was having problems with its e-mail retention and retrieval.

As the two chambers of Congress begin to hammer out a single financial regulatory reform bill over the next several weeks, industry groups have mixed views about a provision in the Senate bill that would prohibit banks from engaging in proprietary trading but exclude municipal, Treasury and federal agency securities from the ban.

The financial regulatory reform bill recently approved by the Senate could be improved to address several key issues that could negatively impact mutual funds, said Paul Schott Stevens, president and CEO of the Investment Company Institute.

WASHINGTON — The recovery zone bond program would double in size to $50 billion and Build America Bonds could be used to do current refundings of existing BABs under a new tax and jobs bill released late Thursday evening by leaders of the House and Senate tax-writing committees.

BOSTON -- In their efforts to harmonize international regulations and allow the trade of structured products between continents, regulators in the U.S. and abroad acknowledge that cooperation with financial industry leaders is key to creating successful, transparent products.