The Senate Finance Committee announced it will hold a hearing on July 22, 2014 to discuss corporate inversions as well as other international tax issues. According to a letter written by Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew to the the House Committee on Ways and Means, there have been recent reports of a number of corporate inversion transactions "designed to change the tax domicile of a U.S.-based multinational firm" involving the purchase of a foreign corporation, the transfer of tax domicile to the foreign firm's country of incorporation, and the shifting of tax liability for the combined

SIFMA and several sponsors of tender option bond ("TOB") programs (the "Sponsors") submitted additional comments to multiple federal agencies, including the SEC, FDIC and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the "Agencies"), regarding proposed rules to implement the credit risk retention requirements of Exchange Act, Section 15G (the "Proposed Rules"). Since the filing of SIFMA and the Sponsors' previous comment letter in October 2013, the Agencies have adopted final regulations of the Volcker Rule. Additionally, the Investment Company Institute and its members met with

The Managed Funds Association ("MFA"), SIFMA and ISDA sent separate comment letters to the European Supervisory Authorities ("ESAs") on their joint consultation paper, titled "Draft Regulatory Technical Standards on Risk-Mitigation Techniques for OTC-Derivative Contracts Not Cleared by a CCP" ("Consultation Paper"), regarding EMIR ("European Market Infrastructure Regulation"). The MFA's letter voiced support for the ESAs' efforts to reduce counterparty credit risk and mitigate the potential for systemic risk resulting from uncleared OTC derivative markets. The MFA emphasized the need to ensure

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ("FDIC") published a notice of proposed rulemaking related to the computation of deposit insurance assessments levied on insured depository institutions. The proposed rule would update the FDIC's assessment methodology to conform it to the capital ratios and ratio thresholds used for "prompt corrective action" purposes, maintaining consistency between the two measures and reducing compliance costs. The proposed rule would also revise the assessment formula for custodial banks to reflect the risk-weighting of certain low-risk, liquid assets in

The SEC granted no-action relief to Klabin S.A., a Brazilian corporation that produces packaging paper, based on the registration exemption provided in Securities Act Section 3(a)(9) for any security exchanged by an issuer with existing security holders when no commission or other remuneration is paid or given for soliciting the exchange. The issues dealt with in the letter were (i) whether the issuer had paid any commission for soliciting the exchange and (ii) whether the issuer of the new securities was also the issuer of the outstanding securities. See: SEC No-Action Letter to Klabin