On May 14, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied an emergency motion to stay the implementation of the conflict minerals rule. The motion for the stay was filed on May 5, 2014, by the appellants in the litigation - National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Roundtable. The denial came in the form of a one-sentence per curiam order. Woody Comment: The emergency motion for a stay may have been the last opportunity to delay the implementation of the rule. Companies must comply with the reporting requirements

The Senate Agriculture Committee held a hearing that focused on the effects of high-frequency trading ("HFT") in the futures markets and allowed committee members to ask witnesses questions concerning HFT, latency and risk controls. Witnesses at the hearing included: Mr. Terrence Duffy, Executive Chairman and President, CME Group; Mr. Vince McGonagle, Director of the Division of Market Oversight of the CFTC; and Dr. Andrei Kirilenko, Professor of the Practice of Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management. Click here for a summary of the hearing by Delta Strategy Group. See: Senate Agriculture

The IRS updated its FATCA FAQs on the IRS website to explain how trustees of "trustee-documented trusts" are registered. Most Model 1 and Model 2 Intergovernmental Agreements under FATCA treat trusts with at least one trustee that is a Reporting U.S. Financial Institution, Reporting Model 1 Foreign Financial Institution ("FFI"), or participating FFI as certified deemed-compliant financial institutions, which means that the trust itself does not register under FATCA and the trustee is responsible for reporting all information with respect to U.S. reportable accounts of the trust. The new FAQ

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ("FRB") published a Finance and Economics Discussion Series ("FEDS") working paper titled "Machines vs. Machines: High Frequency Trading and Hard Information," written by Yesol Huh. The paper focuses on whether, and in what circumstances, high-frequency trading ("HFT") provides liquidity to the market, arguing that HFT liquidity-takers' use of machine-readable information causes an information asymmetry, which becomes more severe when markets are volatile. Using a statistical approach to measure HFT activity, the author argues that the

The SEC order approving a FINRA-proposed rule amendment to FINRA Rule 5110 ("Corporate Financing Rule – Underwriting Terms and Arrangements") was published in the Federal Register. Specifically, the rule change amends provisions regarding unfair arrangements in order to: expand the circumstances under which members and issuers may negotiate termination fees and rights of first refusalunder specified conditions; exempt from the filing requirements exchange-traded funds formed as grantor or statutory trusts; and clarify non-substantive changes regarding documents filed through FINRA's electronic