The SEC Division of Corporate Finance granted no-action relief in a letter to The Dow Chemical Corporation relating to an exchange offer with Olin Corporation, a Virginia corporation. The letter provides relief from Exchange Act Rules 13e-4(d)(1), 13e-4(e)(3), 13e-4(1)(ii) and 14e-1(b) regarding issuer tender offers.

The SEC settled charges with a Seattle-area investment advisory firm and its CEO for "fraudulently inflating the values of investments in the portfolio of a private fund they advised so they could attain unearned management fees." The SEC has also charged the fund's outside auditors with performing a deficient audit that enabled the firm to send misleading financial statements to investors.

New SRO rules, rule proposals and NMS plans were announced by the SEC. Click on the links below to view the SEC's notices of exchange rule changes and proposals from August 31 to September 4. Clearance Settlement: CME: Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of Proposed Rule Change to Reduce the Minimum IRS Guaranty Fund Contribution of IRS Clearing Members (Release No. 34-75781; File No. SR-CME-2015-016; August 28, 2015) ICC: Notice of Designation of Longer Period for Commission Action on Proposed Rule Change to Provide for the Clearance of Additional Western European Sovereign Single

FINRA released a podcast that summarized the latest FINRA notices, compliance resources and news from August 2015. Recent developments highlighted in the podcast included the: Notices SEC's approval of FINRA's amendments to web-based delivery of continuing education's Regulatory Element (FINRA Reg. Notice 15-28) FINRA's revision of the Series 4 Examination Program (FINRA Reg. Notice 15-29) SEC's approval of consolidated FINRA Rule 2241 to "address conflicts of interest related to publication and distribution of equity research report" that replaces NASD and NYSE rules (FINRA Reg. Notice 15-30)

The SEC proposed amendments to Exchange Act Rule 13n-4 ("Duties and Core Principles of Security-Based Swap Data Repository") related to regulatory access to security-based swap data held by security-based swap data repositories. The proposed rule amendments would (i) implement the conditional Exchange Act requirement that security-based swap data repositories make data available to certain regulators and other authorities, and (ii) set forth a conditional exemption from the statutory indemnification requirement from regulators' obtaining access to the information.