The SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy issued an Investor Alert to help investors identify potentially fraudulent unregistered offerings. The Investor Alert reminded investors that a company may not offer or sell securities unless the offering has been registered with the SEC or an exemption to registration is available. An unregistered offering, also known as a private placement, is not subject to some of the laws and regulations that are designed to protect investors, such as disclosure requirements that apply to registered offerings. The SEC advised that, because of the flexible

SIFMA Asset Management Group ("AMG") submitted additional comments to the CFTC regarding its proposed rulemaking concerning the aggregation of positions. SIFMA AMG stated that it is submitting the comments to provide further detail on some of the questions that were raised during the Aggregation Panel Roundtable, and to recap the main concerns expressed in the initial comment letter from February 10, 2014. The SIFMA AMG letter reiterates that aggregation based on ownership rather than control is neither required nor authorized by the CEA, and recommends that the CFTC make the following changes

IOSCO announced that its Committee 7 on Commodity Derivatives (the "Committee") is researching the potential effects of storage infrastructure on the integrity of the price formation process of commodity derivatives in member jurisdictions. The first stage in the Committee's work has been to develop a questionnaire in order to gather information to inform its research. The questions are divided into a number of chapters focusing on different aspects of the storage infrastructure environment. The Committee hopes that the questionnaire will focus particularly on participants' views of perceived

The CFTC announced that Judge Kimba M. Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a Consent Order against a former Citigroup employee in the group's energy division. According to the Order, the former director cheated the firm by (i) inflating and mismarking the value of his position in New York Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Ethanol Futures contracts in the firm's proprietary account, (ii) misrepresenting his profits and losses and (iii) knowingly offsetting and masking the losses in his other futures positions. S ee: Final Judgment and Consent Order.

The MSRB issued a regulatory notice announcing that the SEC approved amendments to MSRB Rule G-3 on professional qualification requirements. In addition, related non-substantive changes were made to Rule G-7 ("Information Concerning Associated Persons") and Rule G-27 ("Supervision"). The amendments to Rule G-3(a), which will also affect Rules G-7 and G-27, include: limiting the scope of permitted activities for a limited representative investment company and variable contracts products to sales to, and purchases from, customers of municipal fund securities; eliminating the financial and