India announced that it agreed with the United States "in substance" to the terms of a Model 1 Intergovernmental Agreement ("IGA") to implement FATCA. The agreement, which was concluded on April 11, according to the U.S. Treasury, will require financial entities in India to report information on U.S. account holders to the Indian Central Board of Direct Taxes ("CBDT"). The CBDT will then automatically forward such information to the U.S. IRS. The Securities and Exchange Board of India ("SEBI") is expected to issue appropriate guidelines in 2014-2015 to market intermediaries on due diligence

The IRS has issued a private ruling to a publicly traded partnership that the partnership's income, from providing "essential fluid handling services" to oil and gas producers engaged in the exploration, development and production of oil and natural gas, is "qualifying income" for purposes of determining whether the partnership should be subject to tax as a corporation rather than as a partnership for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Under the Tax Code generally, a partnership is taxable as a corporation if interests in such partnership are either (i) traded on an established securities

The City of Providence, RI, filed a putative class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, naming as defendants 16 different national securities exchanges, 12 major securities brokers, and 11 High-Frequency Trading ("HFT") firms. The Plaintiff, in the case titled City of Providence v. BATS Global Markets Inc., et al., claims to represent every class of investor who bought or sold stock on a U.S. exchange from April 2009 through the present. The defendant class is only slightly smaller. The allegations in the complaint are generally derivative of

FINRA issued a regulatory notice indicating that it will assess and collect a total of $6 million to adequately fund the Governmental Accounting Standards Board's ("GASB") annual budget by collecting $1,539,775 from its member firms on each calendar quarter beginning in April 2014. In February 2012, FINRA established (see FINRA Regulatory Notice 12-15) an accounting support fee to adequately fund the annual budget of the GASB. The GASB Accounting Support Fee is collected on a quarterly basis from its member firms that report trades to the MSRB. Each member firm's assessment is based on the

SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar delivered a speech, as a part of the Corporate Governance Lecture Series at the Emory University School of Law, in which he asserted that, in order to restore trust between Wall Street and Main Street, it is crucial to have corporate governance practices that foster the principles of (i) accountability, (ii) transparency and (iii) engagement. Framed within the context of the executive compensation process, Commissioner Aguilar stated that these principles should drive the establishment of an effective corporate governance regime, and highlighted a few of the