Regulation

The Securities and Exchange Commission has named Kathleen Griffin as the agency's first chief compliance officer in an ongoing effort to strengthen its internal compliance program.

State and local governments will save $12.3 billion on the $90 billion of Build America Bonds issued so far compared with traditional tax-exempt debt, the Treasury Department said in a recent report touting the success of the program.

Mutual fund investors often represent significant shareholder blocks in big Wall Street firms, but they take little interest in elections of board directors or other proxy matters.

From its inception, a key pitch for legislation to rework the regulatory system has been that it will provide regulators with more tools to prevent another banking crisis. Yet the most highlighted provisions of both the House and Senate bills would give regulators authority they already have, and so far have largely ignored.

NEW YORK -- Designated market makers are disappointed the Securities and Exchange Commission didn't grant them an exception to the new rule banning short sales on plummeting stocks, but they are already anticipating lucrative trading opportunities just before a stock hits the rule's sweet spot.

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent rejection of the fund fee case Jones v. Harris Associates will make it easier for shareholders to sue mutual funds for excessive fees, but it won't make it easier for them to take an excessive fee case to trial, let alone win.

As the distressed-asset market begins to stabilize, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is shaking up the way it handles failed banks and their assets.

Charles Schwab Corp. violated federal laws when it failed to get shareholder approval before putting approximately half the assets of its YieldPlus mutual fund into uninsured mortgage-backed securities, a federal judge ruled.

In a case involving two former employees of Fidelity Investments, a federal judge has ruled that the Sarbanes-Oxley law protecting whistle-blowers at publicly traded companies also extends to mutual fund firms.

State regulators are urging Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd to change a provision in the regulatory reform bill that they claim would force most large state banks to convert to national charters.