Compliance

BOSTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission is about to get a lot bigger and tougher, once Congress approves significant funding increases in its financial reform legislation. The soon-to-be-bulked-up agency is also planning to restructure its resources to place heavy emphasis on inspections, examinations and prosecuting high-profile cases.

The uncertainty and confusion around the fiduciary standard has jolted the financial services industry leading hundreds to pack the rooms at FINRA’s annual conference in Baltimore.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has appointed Brian T. Croteau as its deputy chief accountant for the Professional Practice Group in the SEC’s Office of the Chief Accountant.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to ask issuers of negotiated Build America Bond transactions, in a revised “compliance-check questionnaire,” if any investors who bought their bonds in the primary market paid more than the price the bonds were initially offered at.

The Obama administration continued to push its priorities Thursday on what provisions should be included in the final regulatory reform bill.

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday unanimously approved amendments to its Rule 15c2-12 on disclosure that, like the ones proposed in July, will increase the quantity and timeliness of municipal issuers’ continuing disclosures.

Accounting standard-setters issued new rules Wednesday that could have profound effects, not just on how assets and liabilities get valued but on how banks do business.

New system would allow regulators to better track market trades.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to audit one of every two Build America Bond transactions, Steve Chamberlin, a senior manager in the IRS’ tax-exempt bond office, said during a teleconference Tuesday sponsored by the National Association of Bond Lawyers.

Insurers watch as accounting standard setters prepare to issue new rules that could have profound effects on their business.

The battle over an amendment to establish minimum capital requirements in the regulatory reform bill is the result of a long-standing feud between the FDIC and the Fed.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed a new rule requiring self-regulatory organizations (SROs) to create a consolidated audit trail that would greatly improve regulators' ability to track trading information.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service, concerned that some Build America Bonds are being sold to investors at prices that are too high, is urging municipal issuers to track the trading of their BABs through the Electronic Municipal Market Access system and to question underwriters about the pricing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Walt Disney Co. employee and her boyfriend with insider trading for plotting to sell confidential information about the company’s quarterly earnings to hedge funds.

The SEC alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday that Bonnie Jean Hoxie, an administrative assistant to a “high-level” Disney executive, and her boyfriend, Yonni Sebbag, sent anonymous letters in March to more than 20 hedge funds offering to provide results of Disney’s second quarter earnings.

New SEC rules that take effect May 28 are also making money funds wary.

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.