The SEC charged two business associates in Chile with insider trading on the nonpublic information that one of them learned while serving on the board of directors of a pharmaceutical company. The SEC alleged that one of the business associates exploited highly confidential information from CFR Pharmaceuticals S.A. board meetings at which a tender offer by Abbott Laboratories was discussed. The business associate caused the U.S. brokerage account, of which that business associate was the beneficiary, to purchase millions of dollars' worth of American Depositary Shares ("ADS") of CFR

MFA submitted a letter to the SEC with updated comments and recommendations on the registration and regulation of security-based swap execution facilities ("SB SEFs"). This letter is intended to supplement MFA's comment letter dated April 4, 2011. MFA's supplemental comment letter offers recommendations based on MFA members' SEF trading experiences to date under the CFTC's SEF regime, which has been implemented in the years since the SEC first issued its proposed SB SEFs rules. In particular, the supplemental comment letter does the following: suggests completing a substantive review of the SB

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision ("BCBS") published a consultative paper titled "Revisions to the Standardized Approach for Credit Risk." According to the BCBS, the proposed revisions seek to strengthen the existing regulatory capital standards in several ways, including by: reducing reliance on external credit ratings; enhancing granularity and risk sensitivity; updating risk weight calibrations; increasing comparability with the internal ratings-based approach with respect to the definition and treatment of similar exposures; and improving clarity on the application of the

ESMA published a preliminary cost-benefit analysis ("CBA") regarding regulatory technical standards and their implementation as proposed by ESMA for MiFID II. According to ESMA, the CBA should be read together with the Consultation Paper and the draft standards published by ESMA on December 19, 2014. Together, they cover most of the topics with which ESMA is mandated on Level 2. A full and all-encompassing CBA will follow, together with the publication of the final technical standards on MiFID II.

The CFTC Subcommittee on Foreign Exchange Markets (the "Subcommittee") submitted a report to the Global Markets Advisory Committee ("GMAC") regarding a prospective clearing mandate for foreign exchange non-deliverable forwards ("NDFs"). The Subcommittee was established after a GMAC advisory meeting that focused partly on issues related to clearing NDFs. The Subcommittee was charged with completing a report for the GMAC that would address the following questions: Is an NDF clearing mandate appropriate? What is the best way for the CFTC to implement a clearing mandate? Are there likely to be any