Compliance

Merrill Lynch is set to pay New Jersey $728,260 in civil penalties and change its business practices to be in compliance with state law.

The head of the BlackRock product team for exchange-traded funds is urging the SEC and CFTC to establish circuit breakers across all exchanges that were uniform for both stocks and ETFs.

The proposal, which would only apply to banks supervised by the agency, said institutions should give customers the chance to opt out of overdraft programs for their checking accounts and any automated clearing house transfers, as well as monitor overdraft usage to avoid unfair consumer fees.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at such mechanisms as price collars and limits on upward or downward movements in a stock in a single day, in the wake of the May 6th "flash crash."

An overreliance on computer systems and high-frequency trading are seen by financial advisors as the primary drivers of the sharpest single-day point decline in Dow Jones history, according to a survey commissioned by the iShares Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) business, conducted by Market Strategies International and released by BlackRock, the investment advisory firm.

Congressman Richard Neal, D-Mass., has introduced legislation that would allow companies to set up automatic payroll deposit Individual Retirement Accounts, or Auto IRAs, for workers who do not have access to employer-provided qualified pension plans.

Since the beginning of the year, Wall Street firms, trade associations, and municipal bond issuers have significantly stepped up their lobbying efforts to get lawmakers to extend the Build America Bonds program before it expires at the end of December.

No one knows what housing market reform — especially the reshaping of the government-sponsored enterprises — will look like, but Wall Street certainly is paying close attention to its impact on a kee source of fee income.

Even as they begin dropping credit ratings as a supervisory source, regulators signaled Tuesday they are worried about abandoning their use altogether, suggesting that potential alternatives are not much of an improvement.

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A supplier of risk management software to bulge bracket firms on Wall Street has proposed that the Securities and Exchange Commission rely on real-time data stored in a nationwide cloud of computing power and networks to create an effective audit trail of stock market activity.

Morgan Stanley & Co. has been fined $800,000 by FINRA for failing to make public disclosures required by the agency’s rules governing research analyst conflicts of interest.

FINRA fined the financial services company for deficient conflict of interest disclosures in equity research reports and public appearances.

WASHINGTON — Four major municipal market groups are urging the Treasury Department to issue guidance confirming that the existing regulatory framework on issue price for tax-exempt bonds also applies to Build America Bonds and stating that if issuers follow certain long-standing practices, they can be confident they are complying with the rules in this area.

Although the Obama administration sought to avoid granting carve-outs as part of the regulatory reform bill, the final law is riddled with them.

Major Wall Street, business, political and consumer finance magazines are warning investors about hidden 12b-1 and 401(k) fees, various share classes and the loads ascribed to them.

Fund Manager Sentenced Six Years on Tax Charges

WASHINGTON — Regulators are poised next week to start moving away from reliance on the tarnished credit rating agencies in the supervisory process, but finding other options likely will be difficult.

Law curtails regulator's powers, requires radical transparency

The founder and principal manager of a bogus foreign exchange fund that effectively operated like a Ponzi scheme has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison on tax charges.