Senate Banking Chair Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) released a draft of "The Financial Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015". The bill is intended to implement a wide variety of financial regulatory reforms and promote greater Congressional oversight of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the "FRB"). The bill is divided into 8 Titles that would implement the following reforms: Title 1 concerns access to consumer credit and would (i) streamline certain bank examination and reporting requirements for community banks and (ii) exempt banks with less than $10 billion in assets from the

SIFMA and ISDA responded to the CFTC's request for comments in its initial response to the order of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in SIFMA v. CFTC. The order remanded eight swaps-related rulemakings by the CFTC to address "inadequacies" in the Commission's consideration of costs and benefits. In its initial response, the CFTC issued supplements formally to the preambles of the eight remanded swaps-related rulemakings and solicited comments on the cross-border costs and benefits that apply to the remanded rules and that differ from those that apply to activities

The Asset Management Group of SIFMA ("SIFMA AMG") submitted comments to the CFTC about the swap execution facility ("SEF") regulatory framework and related rules. The comment letter also responded to CFTC Commissioner Giancarlo's recent white paper on swaps trading rules. SIFMA AMG applauded Commissioner Giancarlo's "efforts to highlight certain adverse market consequences" of the current SEF regulatory framework. Specifically, SIFMA AMG expressed its support of Commissioner Giancarlo's suggestions, including the following: the made-available-to-trade ("MAT") process should be "significantly

In a public statement titled "U.S. Equity Market Structure: Making Our Markets Work Better for Investors," Commissioner Aguilar asserted that the SEC must undertake a holistic review of the United States' current equity market structure in order to reconcile competing claims by experts and market participants that U.S. equity markets are not only "the most liquid, transparent, efficient and competitive [markets] in the world," but also "broken," "a complete mess" and "rigged." Hierarchy of Policy Goals According to Commissioner Aguilar, the SEC's review should begin with the simple realization

The SEC announced fraud charges against ITT Educational Services, Inc. ("ITT"), as well as its chief executive and financial officers. According to the SEC, national operator of for-profit colleges ITT and its two executives fraudulently concealed from its investors the poor performance and "looming financial impact" of two student loan programs that ITT guaranteed financially. The SEC alleges that ITT formed both of these student loan programs to provide off-balance sheet loans for ITT's students following the collapse of the private student loan market. According to the SEC, ITT induced