The SEC charged the former controller of a New York-based college with defrauding municipal securities investors by unlawfully hiding the college's declining finances. According to the Complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the college came under financial duress as student enrollment declined and tuition revenues decreased. The SEC alleged that former controller Keith Borge illegally withdrew funds designated for the college's endowment to fund other expenses at the college. The SEC stated that Mr. Borge took steps to produce financial statements

A broker-dealer agreed to settle FINRA charges for failing to (i) report transactions in TRACE-eligible securities, and (ii) mark order tickets for securities transactions as "solicited" or "unsolicited." The TRACE reporting violations arose because the firm failed to re-report rejected TRACE reports. The order ticket marking violation arose because the firm failed to amend the "N.A." default setting on the order ticket system provided by the firm's clearing broker to reflect whether a trade was "solicited" or "unsolicited." According to the Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent, Stonecrest

An investment adviser and its founder agreed to settle SEC charges for stealing millions of dollars from a private fund. According to the SEC Order, Dennis Gibb, the founder of Sweetwater Investments, Inc. ("Sweetwater"), stole over $3 million from Sweetwater Income Flood LP, a private fund that Sweetwater managed. The SEC alleged that Mr. Gibb created and distributed to investors false account statements and tax documents which inflated assets. In addition, Mr. Gibb reported false amounts of assets under management in Form ADV submitted to the SEC. To settle the charges, Mr. Gibb and

The CFTC Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight ("DSIO") granted no-action relief to swap dealers ("SDs") acting as a prime broker from providing certain disclosures under CFTC Rule 23.431(a)-(b). According to the DSIO, the relief is intended to facilitate more market participants, particularly prime brokers, to trade swaps on swap execution facilities ("SEFs"). The relief covers the situations in which an SD enters into a prime brokerage arrangement with a client in which the client enters into (i) a swap on an SEF (an "on-SEF transaction") and (ii) an offsetting bilateral

SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson Jr. dissented from the agency's final rules simplifying disclosure requirements. Mr. Jackson Jr. said that the rule reverses the SEC staff's recommendation that firms disclose a "clear identifier of their corporate entities." He also noted that the rule removes the SEC staff's role as "gatekeepers when companies redact information from disclosures." Mr. Jackson Jr. stated that the financial crisis taught regulators that the complexity of firms' structures made it difficult to identify the corporate entities responsible for risktaking. He further said that to