Compliance

With nearly half of America’s workforce, 78 million people, without a retirement plan, Prudential is advocating that Congress pass a law to include automatic IRAs and multiple small employer plans in the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

Charles Schwab filed arguments in federal court in San Francisco on March 19 to try to preclude the Securities and Exchange Commission from suing it over its YieldPlus fund, which had nearly 50% of its assets in mortgage-backed securities.

Hard as it is to defend the Byzantine nature of U.S. bank supervision, it's at least as hard to find a model guaranteed to provide a better defense against financial crises.

Hedge funds in Europe have begun embracing the UCITS III structure to sell their portfolios to a wider base of retail investors and rebuild trust, but shareholder interest groups warn this may be a vast mistake. Transparency of complex structures still does not make an investor well-informed or an investment suitable, they argue.

Market observers say that Obama’s healthcare plan as it now stands creates 30 million new consumers without reining in costs.

Tampa broker-dealer had been facing problems for months.

Property/casualty insurers are objecting to provisions contained within regulatory reform legislation authored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd.

The 13 to 10 vote was unusually quick and followed no substantive discussion of the bill, with Republicans opting not to offer any of the more than 100 amendments they had filed with the panel.

PHOENIX -- The money market fund industry and the Investment Company Institute are dead-set against a floating net asset value.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is promising to take another look at revising or eliminating 12b-1 fees this year, now that the financial crisis seems to be abating.

Market Players Push for Changes

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd's regulatory reform bill is generally winning praise for provisions giving the government more power to smoothly unwind a large, systemically important firm, but is also raising a host of practical concerns observers say could undermine its effectiveness.

Although the Pension Protection Act of 2006 has gone a long way toward addressing many of the issues plaguing the defined contribution system, a report from State Street Corp. said that more has to be done to ensure participants adequately save for retirement.

The House Financial Services Committee plans to probe the regulatory failures that led up to the collapse of Lehman Brothers after a bankruptcy examiner released a damning report last week on the investment bank’s accounting manipulations.

SIFMA and CMSA back Garrett's follow-up bill

Sen. Richard Shelby raised concerns with bankers on Thursday that "too big to fail" would survive if a proposed $50 billion fund to help unwind failing financial institutions remains in the Senate's latest regulatory reform bill.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair opened the door Thursday to extending blanket deposit insurance coverage on business accounts, but disagreed with another regulator's push to count more loan-loss reserves as capital.

The unwinding of the Federal Reserve's liquidity programs is unlikely to boost the sickly yields on tax-free money market funds, participants say.

Redemption fees successfully protect mutual funds from short-term traders, whose churning can serious hurt fund performance, according to “Redemption Fees: Reward for Punishment,” authored by three researchers at Texas Tech University’s Division of Personal Financial Planning.

A Dutch pension fund is the latest in a string of lawsuits against the banking company.