LabCFTC Chief Innovation Officer and Director Daniel Gorfine encouraged "all levels of leadership" within business and the government to improve technological literacy.

A Canadian bank agreed to pay $800,000 to settle CFTC charges that it engaged in "spoofing" in gold and silver futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. According to the CFTC, the spoof orders were placed to create the impression of greater buying or selling interest than would have existed absent such orders. In accepting the settlement offer, the CFTC recognized the self-reporting and cooperation of the Bank of Nova Scotia ("BNS"). The CFTC stated that self-reporting, cooperation and remediation by BNS were recognized in the form of a reduced civil monetary penalty.

The SEC's proposal to "simplify and streamline" the financial disclosure requirements under Regulation S-X that apply to certain registered debt offerings was published in the Federal Register. Comments on the proposed amendments must be received by December 3, 2018. As previously covered, the proposed changes are intended to streamline financial disclosure requirements for (i) the guarantors and issuers of guaranteed securities and (ii) issuers' affiliates whose securities collateralize a registrant's securities.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC and the National Credit Union Administration, with the concurrence of FinCEN, granted banks and bank subsidiaries an exemption from the requirements of the customer identification program ("CIP") rules for premium finance lending. Premium finance loans provide short-term financing to businesses to help facilitate purchases of property and casualty insurance policies. The CIP rules require a bank to implement "risk-based verification procedures" to ensure that it can "form a reasonable belief" that it knows the

CFTC Chair J. Christopher Giancarlo highlighted developments in the agency's enforcement program. In remarks at the Economic Club of Minnesota, Mr. Giancarlo declared that regulatory enforcement at the CFTC "is a priority and a bipartisan one," and that "there will be no pause, no let up, and no relaxation" in the agency's efforts to enforce the law and punish wrongdoing. Mr. Giancarlo outlined the several priorities of the CFTC's enforcement program: Manipulative Conduct Cases : He said that one of the CFTC's central responsibilities is to guarantee that the price discovery process is