FINRA announced that the SEC approved amendments to FINRA Rule 5210("Publication of Transactions and Quotations") to limit "self-trading." The new rule change would, among other things, add Supplementary Material .02 to FINRA Rule 5210 to address members' obligations with respect to certain securities transactions that result from the unintentional interaction of orders originating from the same firm, known as "self-trades," that involve no change in the beneficial ownership of the security. The rule amendments establish a distinction between two types of transactions in which the same person

The SEC announced that Chief Economist and Division of Economic and Risk Analysis Director Craig M. Lewis will leave the agency on May 2, 2014. Mr. Davis will return to his position as the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Finance at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management. See: SEC Press Release.

The week of April 28, 2014 began with actions by the United States and Canada to impose targeted sanctions against additional Russian individuals and entities in connection with the crisis in Ukraine. The following day, the European Union and Japan followed suit (kind of), announcing sanctions against individuals but, significantly, not against entities. The announcement by Japan of sanctions against 23 Russian and Ukrainian individuals was the first of its kind by that country in connection with the situation in Ukraine, although the Japanese government has yet to release the names of the

The CFTC Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight ("DSIO") issued four separate no-action letters to commodity pool operators ("CPOs") providing relief from annual report filing and certification requirements. CFTC Letter 14-63 granted exemptive relief to a CPO of a commodity pool that undertook a change in its underlying strategy in 2013. Subsequently, the CPO gave its existing investors an opportunity to liquidate and suspend all fees beyond operational expenses and began trading with the new models in the latter half of 2013. The letter granted conditional relief from the

The SEC announced an enforcement action against the New York Stock Exchange LLC ("NYSE"), NYSE Arca, Inc. ("NYSE Arca"), NYSE MKT LLC ("NYSE MKT") (the "exchanges") and the exchanges' affiliated routing broker, Archipelago Securities, L.L.C., for conducting business activities in violation of the exchanges' SEC-approved rules, including business activities that required a rule when none was in effect. The SEC order covers violations from 2008 to 2012 and alleges, among other things, that (1) NYSE provided co-location services to customers on disparate contractual terms without a rule in effect