The U.S. Treasury ("Treasury") Department Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") sanctioned Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. ("PdVSA"), the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company, pursuant to Executive Order ("EO") 13850. The move comes less than a week after the United States recognized opposition politician Juan Guaidó as the interim leader of Venezuela. In general - and except as provided in the General Licenses described below - as of January 28, 2019, the property and interests in property of PdVSA and its majority-owned subsidiaries are blocked, and U.S. persons are prohibited

FINRA's Office of the Chief Economist ("OCE") found that brokers that route orders to affiliated alternative trading systems ("ATSs") at high rates obtain lower fill rates. In a working paper, OCE analyzed order-handling information over the span of 330 million institutional orders to study whether order routing by brokers to affiliated ATSs impacts the quality of execution. FINRA's OCE found that trading costs are higher when clients select a broker with high rates of affiliated ATS routing. In addition, FINRA's OCE concluded that enhanced disclosures on order handling could benefit

CFTC Chair J. Christopher Giancarlo will seek an extension (to March 15) of the comment period for a proposal to amend various aspects of the rules governing the trading of swaps (the "SEF Proposal"). He also intends to move forward with amendments to the CFTC cross-border framework. In a keynote address at the ABA Business Law Section Derivative & Futures Law Committee Meeting, Mr. Giancarlo highlighted aspects of the SEF Proposal and his approach to cross-border regulation. On cross-border matters, Mr. Giancarlo reiterated points he raised in a 2018 white paper, " Cross-Border Swaps

FINRA issued a proposal to permit alternative trading systems ("ATSs") and broker-dealer subscribers to ATSs to report transactions in U.S. Treasuries executed on ATSs on a "partially disaggregated" basis until April 12, 2019. The proposal would permit firms to report some trades on an individual basis, and other trades on aggregated basis ( i.e., with aggregate price and volume information across trades). After April 12, 2019, ATSs and their broker-dealer subscribers will be required to report U.S. Treasury transactions on a "fully-disaggregated" basis ( i.e., to report each individual

SEC Divisions and Offices announced their transition plans regarding the recommencement of normal operations. The Division of Trading and Markets plans to address any pending filings, submissions and requests for staff action based on when the items were submitted to the SEC. All SRO rule filings made through the Electronic Form Filing System ("EFFS") during the period from December 26, 2018 to January 28, 2019 will be deemed filed with the EFFS as of January 28, 2019. The Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations ("OCIE") said that it expects to resume examinations, "including those