Law and regulation

The federal regulator late Monday adopted a rule that establishes standards for how clearing agencies should manage risks and run their operations.

SIFMA chief executive Tim Ryan said at the trade group’s annual meeting that the commodity futures regulator’s plan to oversee swaps made by foreign firms with U.S. participants breaks from international standards.

A tipping point is coming regarding anger and dissatisfaction over Dodd-Frank. But a new assessment of the regulatory landscape points a way for policymakers to get out of the mess.

The chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, hosted a lunch with 75 New York business leaders in a bid to help to steer Washington away from the fiscal cliff and toward a budget compromise akin to Simpson-Bowles.

Last week, shareholders of $253 million Morgan Stanley Mid Cap Growth Fund approved a move to transfer the fund’s assets to the Mid Cap Growth Portfolio in exchange for shares of Mid Cap Growth, according to a Securities and Exchange filing.

David Lerner was banned from the securities industry for a year and his firm ordered to pay $12 million for misleading investors into buying real estate investment trusts, regulators said. Lerner, whose David Lerner Associates Inc. has underwritten about $7 billion of its Apple REITs, was also fined $250,000, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said today in a statement.

QuantShares is in the process of shelving a trio of exchange-traded funds.

Also, 293 midsize advisors called out for delayed move to state oversight.

Federal regulators are reviewing banks' growth plans, particularly those that include third-party companies. To avoid excessive scrutiny, industry experts advise banks to proactively discuss such relationships with examiners.

Here’s one alternative fund that won’t be on advisors’ list this Christmas.

A little more than two years after the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill was signed into law, a prominent Washington think tank has convened a broad range of policy experts to examine the law, to the extent that it has been implemented, and produce a substantive set of recommendations for lawmakers to consider as they mull updates to improve the financial regulatory landscape.

Kevin Keller, the CEO of the CFP Board, expain how enforcement has changed since he took the helm at the company and he looks ahead at the future of the group.

Kevin Keller, the CEO of the CFP Board, discusses what it will take to attract advisors to become CFPs and dispels some of the biggest myths and misconceptions about the credentials.

Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. is looking to close the BBH Core Select fund (BBTEX, BBTRX) to new investors when total net assets in the fund reach approximately $3.5 billion.

Most believe without action to address tax cuts and spending cuts that are set to roll out at the end of the year, economic conditions will worsen.

Kevin Keller, the CEO of the CFP Board of Standards, says that the fiduciary standard will remain a hot button issue in 2013. In the second part of a four-part interview, he also discusses dealing with criticism after the organization raised fees last year.

When Kevin Keller took helm of the CFP Board in 2007, the organization was facing a crisis of confidence among many planners throughout the industry. Five years later, he's led a resurgence. In a one-on-one interview, he discusses how far the organization has come, where it's going, and how it plans to further the professional stature of the financial-planning industry.

Last month, the Board of Trustees of the Huntington Funds voted to close and liquidate the Huntington Macro 100 Fund, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Market participants should be wary of threats to tax-exempt bonds, but the politically-charged atmosphere in Washington, D.C. raises doubts about the ability of Congress to pass comprehensive tax reform legislation, lobbyists and others said Friday.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was wrong to say Dodd-Frank offers the "biggest kiss" to large banks, according to Sheila Bair.