Law and regulation

A district court judge delivered a blistering rebuke of the Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday, tossing out a central bank rule that caps debit card transaction fees and saying the central bank exceeded its authority.

Our legal expert discusses how to make sure you're getting your due in commissions.

A recent CFP Board sanction highlights the challenge for planners in identifying where they stand amid the range of compensation models.

Everyone agrees that the current mishmash of legal oversight doesn't work. Here's a framework that could clean up the mess.

While the regulatory reform effort is likely to continue on its current path if Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve Board's vice chairman, is tapped to lead the central bank, the future is decidedly murkier if Larry Summers wins the post.

The Treasury Department said it expects to borrow $209 billion in the third quarter and end with a $95 billion cash balance.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board will issue two concept releases next month, one seeking public comment on whether to develop a best execution rule and another requesting input on enhancing post-trade data reporting and developing standards for collecting and disseminating pre-trade information.

Hedge fund managers now no longer have to hide behind their websites because they are free to advertise openly to investors who meet their investment requirements courtesy of President Obama's JOBS Act

Forthcoming federal rules could require all investment advisors to implement formal anti-money laundering programs -- a shift that would bring RIAs under a similar regulatory regime as that governing broker-dealers, mutual fund complexes and other financial institutions.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took seven enforcement actions and freed 13 banks from orders in June, according to a list of regulatory actions released Friday.

One of the leading contenders to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, Lawrence Summers, has been a paid consultant to Citigroup and other financial institutions, which opponents of his nomination are likely to focus on.

The Federal Reserve Board will be expanding its yearly stress-test exercise next year to include 11 more bank holding companies, bringing the total to 29 firms.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is proposing a new “execution-with-diligence” standard for municipal trading that would require a dealer to use “reasonable diligence” to determine the market for a bond so the price it provides to a customer is “fair and reasonable under prevailing market conditions.”

The group targeted companies that processed financial transactions and retailers that received and transmitted financial data.

Former UBS AG executive Peter Ghavami was sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging what should have been competitive bids to handle municipal-bond investment deals.

Federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against SAC Capital on Thursday. Dubbing SAC “a veritable magnet of market cheaters,” authorities argued that the company allowed a “systematic” insider trading scheme to play out between 1999 to 2010. It is deemed that the scheme generated profits for the firm in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Former UBS AG executive Peter Ghavami was sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging what should have been competitive bids to handle municipal-bond investment deals.

A Texas man has been accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme involving the digital currency Bitcoin. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Trendon Shavers with defrauding investors of nearly $150,000 worth of bitcoins through Bitcoin Savings and Trust, an online investment scheme he ran, and of making false claims while soliciting investments online in 2011 and 2012.

Ex-UBS AG Managing Director Peter Ghavami and two former colleagues convicted of rigging municipal bond investment deals may be sentenced to less prison time than the government is seeking, a federal judge said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Trendon Shavers with defrauding investors of nearly $150,000 worth of bitcoins through Bitcoin Savings and Trust, an online investment scheme he ran, and of making false claims while soliciting investments online in 2011 and 2012.