Law and regulation

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow the use of "flash orders" in options markets.

The FDIC will soon post bi-weekly records of closed-door meetings it holds with bankers and other stakeholders regarding regulatory reform, the agency said Thursday.

Nearly 1,200 banks have been hit with an enforcement action made public by federal regulators since the start of 2008, and that number is expected to climb at an accelerated rate.

Merrill Lynch is set to pay New Jersey $728,260 in civil penalties and change its business practices to be in compliance with state law.

The head of the BlackRock product team for exchange-traded funds is urging the SEC and CFTC to establish circuit breakers across all exchanges that were uniform for both stocks and ETFs.

The proposal, which would only apply to banks supervised by the agency, said institutions should give customers the chance to opt out of overdraft programs for their checking accounts and any automated clearing house transfers, as well as monitor overdraft usage to avoid unfair consumer fees.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at such mechanisms as price collars and limits on upward or downward movements in a stock in a single day, in the wake of the May 6th "flash crash."

Congressman Richard Neal, D-Mass., has introduced legislation that would allow companies to set up automatic payroll deposit Individual Retirement Accounts, or Auto IRAs, for workers who do not have access to employer-provided qualified pension plans.

Since the beginning of the year, Wall Street firms, trade associations, and municipal bond issuers have significantly stepped up their lobbying efforts to get lawmakers to extend the Build America Bonds program before it expires at the end of December.

No one knows what housing market reform — especially the reshaping of the government-sponsored enterprises — will look like, but Wall Street certainly is paying close attention to its impact on a kee source of fee income.

Even as they begin dropping credit ratings as a supervisory source, regulators signaled Tuesday they are worried about abandoning their use altogether, suggesting that potential alternatives are not much of an improvement.

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FINRA fined the financial services company for deficient conflict of interest disclosures in equity research reports and public appearances.

Although the Obama administration sought to avoid granting carve-outs as part of the regulatory reform bill, the final law is riddled with them.

Law curtails regulator's powers, requires radical transparency

The founder and principal manager of a bogus foreign exchange fund that effectively operated like a Ponzi scheme has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison on tax charges.

Transparency seen as reviving ABS markets.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accepted settlement offers from three former officers of New Century Financial Corp., the subprime lender that was one of the first to collapse at the start of the subprime mortgage crisis.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday charged Citigroup with misleading investors about its exposure to subprime mortgage-related securities.

In their first presentations to analysts after the financial reform bill passed, some bank executives treated the landmark legislation like any other facet of business, sandwiching relevant cost estimates between the usual slides on capital ratios and credit losses.