The SEC published for comment proposed amendments to regulations under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") to allow the SEC to collect fees that reflect its actual costs, add an appeals time frame, and clarify other issues in the regulations. According to the SEC, the proposed amendments: (i) provide a formula for fees charged to FOIA requesters, (ii) incorporate a time frame in which a FOIA requester must file an appeal in the event a request or a portion thereof is denied, (iii) allow for submission of FOIA appeals by email or facsimile, and (iv) allow the Office of FOIA Services to

The SEC charged a private equity firm with violating "pay-to-play" rules by continuing to receive advisory fees from the city and state pension funds following campaign contributions made by an associate to gubernatorial and mayoral campaigns. This is the first time the SEC has charged a private equity firm with violating pay-to-play rules. The pay-to-play rules prohibit investment advisers from providing compensatory advisory services for two years following a campaign contribution by the firm or certain associates to political candidates or officials in positions to influence the selection

The National Futures Association ("NFA") barred and fined futures commission merchant ("FCM") Vision Financial Markets ("Vision Financial") and commodity trading adviser ("CTA") Ace Investment Strategists ("Ace Investment") from membership for misappropriating customer funds related to trade allocations. According to the complaint, Vision Financial facilitated Ace Investment's actions, even though the firm was in a position to identity and stop the abuses. The complaint stated that Vision Financial has had a "long history of supervisory issues," as it has been a subject of four prior

The House Financial Services Committee approved two bills regarding the authority and transparency of the Financial Stability Oversight Council ("FSOC"). H.R. 4881, which was agreed to as amended, places a one-year moratorium on the authority of the FSOC to make financial stability determinations. The bill was approved 32-27 and would prevent the FSOC from designating any new insurance companies or asset managers as "systemically important" for one year as Congress continues to review the FSOC's process for deeming bank and non-bank institutions to be significant. H.R. 4387, or the FSOC

SEC Chair Mary Jo White delivered a speech at the Economic Club of New York, discussing the changing nature of intermediation and the importance of considering competition and technology in addressing market structure issues. Chair White explained that securities markets operate within a structure of rules which is based not only on regulation, but also on the complex interaction of regulation with competition and technology. Considering this "dynamic reality," Chair White stated that the SEC should not be chasing regulatory solutions that "fix" market structure once and for all, since the