By almost any measure, trust in financial services firms have fallen to new lows or close to them.

Securities and Exchange Commission officials downplayed the potential for the so-called budget "sequestration" Thursday, but said dealers selling Build America Bonds should inform investors of any potentially risky call provisions.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is not pursuing the idea of imposing a three-strikes-and-you're-out system for issuers with disclosure failures, like the one floated last week by an SEC commissioner, John Cross, the director of the SEC's Office of Municipal Securities said here on Thursday.

The executive listed a few areas where the organization is targeting rule-breakers.

It turns out that Jasen Snelling, the Cincinnati man who was sentenced Tuesday to 131 months in prison for running a Ponzi scheme, also ran a ‘successful” mutual fund back in the day.

Morgan Keegan & Co., the brokerage firm acquired by Raymond James Financial Inc., was ordered by a federal appeals court to pay a group of 18 investors a $9.2 million arbitration award.

SEC chairman Mary L. Schapiro said there is not a substantive effort to review the agency’s “clearly erroneous” trade rules, even though Knight Capital took $457.6 million in losses after a flood of erroneous trades on August 1.

Principal Funds’ president and CEO Nora Everett has been elected to the Investment Company Institute's Board of Governors.

Raymond James Executive Chairman Thomas James said he is optimistic that the financial services industry can work more closely with regulators, even as evolving regulations such as a uniform fiduciary standard and the Volcker Rule have started off with the wrong approach.

Raymond James executive Chet Helck called for a year of working to restore public trust and confidence in the financial services industry, economy and nation at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association annual conference on Tuesday.

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.

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.

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.

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Putnam Advisory, a unit of Boston-based Putnam Investments, was charged yesterday by Massachusetts state regulators with deceiving investors who purchased about $3 billion in mortgage-related securities created and sold by Putnam several years ago.