The SEC announced that the former chief operating officer at Harbinger Capital Partners LLC ("Harbinger") agreed to settle charges that he assisted Harbinger and its owner in a scheme to misappropriate money from a hedge fund they managed in order to pay Harbinger's owner's personal taxes. See: SEC Press Release.

The CFTC issued an Amended and Restated Order to extend the CFTC's designation of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation and Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication joint venture ("DTCC-SWIFT") as the provider of legal entity identifiers ("LEIs"), pursuant to the CFTC's swap data recordkeeping and reporting rules. DTCC-SWIFT's original designation was made on July 23, 2012 for a term of two years. The Amended and Restated Order extends the DTCC-SWIFT designation for an additional year to allow the terms of a transition into a fully operational global LEI system to be

The CFTC issued an Order against Lloyds Banking Group plc and Lloyds Bank plc (collectively, "Lloyds") to bring and settle charges for acts of manipulation, attempted manipulation and false reporting of LIBOR for Sterling, U.S. Dollar and Yen. The CFTC also settled charges that Lloyds aided and abetted the attempts of derivatives traders at Rabobank to manipulation Yen LIBOR. In a related action, the U.S. Department of Justice entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with Lloyds, and deferred criminal wire fraud charges in exchange for Lloyds' agreeing to an $86 million penalty and

The SEC's approval of FINRA-proposed Rule 2081 regarding prohibited conditions relating to expungement of customer dispute information was published in the Federal Register. The new FINRA Rule 2081 would prohibit a firm or registered representative from conditioning a settlement of a customer dispute on – or otherwise compensating a customer for – the customer's agreement to consent to, or to not oppose, the firm's or representative's request to expunge such information from the Central Registration Depository ("CRD") system. The prohibition would apply to both written and oral agreements, and

On its Web site, the MSRB announced the creation of an online education center that consolidates videos, fact sheets and a library of educational resources previously available elsewhere on the MSRB Web site and the Electronic Municipal Market Access Web site. The new online education center covers the following topics: the features and risks of municipal securities; the life cycle of a municipal bond; 529 college savings plans; preparing to invest in bonds; buying and selling municipal bonds; monitoring municipal securities; the process of issuing municipal securities; and issuer disclosure