The SEC's approval of FINRA's revisions to the definitions of "non-public" and "public" arbitrator was published in the Federal Register. FINRA proposed to delete and replace the two definitions in FINRA Rule 12100 of the Customer Code and FINRA Rule 13100 of the Industry Code. New Rule 12100 of the Customer Code broadens the application of the current Rule 12100 by (i) increasing the look-back period from two years to five years, (ii) making the rule apply not only to services provided to specified financial industry entities, but also to services provided to any persons or entities

The Office of Financial Research issued a working paper examining whether the stress test results of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ("FRB") have become more predictable and "arguably less informative." According to the working paper, projected losses in the 2013 and 2014 stress tests "are nearly perfectly correlated for bank holding companies that participated in both rounds." The paper compares projected losses across different scenarios used in the 2014 stress test, and finds "surprisingly high" correlations for outcomes grouped by bank or by loan category, which

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") issued an order approving Algonquin Gas Transmission LLC's proposal to construct and operate its Algonquin Incremental Market Project in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. FERC also approved Algonquin's requests to abandon a meter and regulating station in New London County, Connecticut, which will be replaced as part of the project, and to remove and replace certain aboveground facilities. See: FERC Order.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs held a hearing titled "Federal Reserve Accountability and Reform." The following witnesses testified at the hearing: Dr. John B. Taylor, Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics, Stanford University (Written Testimony); Dr. Paul Kupiec, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute (Written Testimony); Dr. Allan H. Meltzer, Professor of Political Economy, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University (Written Testimony); and Mr. Peter Conti-Brown, Academic Fellow, Stanford Law School (Written Testimony). C lick

The SEC extended its own deadline to act on a proposed tick size pilot program. The SEC cited the need for additional time to consider, and take action, given public comments received. The SEC received 74 comment letters as of February 26, 2015. The details of the pilot program include: a one-year pilot period; and three test groups and one Control Group (with 400 pilot securities in each group for a total of 1600 pilot securities): Control Group pilot securities will be quoted and traded at any price increment that is currently permitted; Test Group One pilot securities will be quoted in $0