Compliance

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.

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.

BOSTON -- The staggering growth of UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America has led to a proliferation of new investment products and trading opportunities, but restrictive investment mandates and tax requirements in the U.S. are causing some U.S. investors to feel left out of the game.

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.

Though House and Senate lawmakers still have plenty of issues to work out in the final regulatory reform bill, one thing is already clear: The legislation will do little to streamline the fractured financial regulatory framework.

Bill Would Extend Muni Provisions