The Subcommittee on Capital Markets of the House Committee on Financial Services will hold a hearing titled "Equity Market Structure: A Review of SEC Regulation NMS" to discuss the effects of Reg. NMS ("Regulation of the National Market System") on U.S. equity markets. The following witnesses are scheduled to appear: Roel Campos, Partner at Locke Lord LLP and former SEC Commissioner, 2002-2007; Erik R. Sirri, Professor of Finance at Babson College and former Director of SEC Division of Trading and Markets, 2006-2009; Chester Spatt, Professor of Finance at Carnegie Mellon University and former

The MSRB released its updated annual Fact Book, an online sourcebook that analyzes trading data and other statistics for the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market. The new Fact Book contains data from 2013 and an analysis of the more than 50 million trades that occurred in the municipal market during the last five years. Additionally, it presents year-over-year comparisons of data in financial and other disclosures made by municipal bond issuers over the last two years. See: Updated MSRB Fact Book; Press Release.

Mercatus scholars Dr. Patrick McLaughlin and Robert Greene published a study quantifying the regulations the regulations in Dodd-Frank to determine the number of new restrictions the Act has created and will continue to create. By applying the methodology of "RegData," which relies on the content of the regulatory text as a data source, McLaughlin and Greene's study estimated that Dodd-Frank will increase financial industry regulatory restrictions by 32 percent, yielding more new restrictions than were created between 1997 and 2010. According to the study, it is important to note that most

FINRA issued a notice to solicit comments on a proposed set of rules for firms that meet the definition of "limited corporate financing broker" ("LCFB"). According to the notice, an "LCFB" is a firm that engages in a limited range of activities, essentially advising companies and private equity funds on capital raising and corporate restructuring. The proposed rule set, or LCFB Rule 010 Series, would not apply to firms that carry or maintain customer accounts, handle customers' funds or securities, accept customers' trading orders, or engage in proprietary trading or market-making. Comments

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced interim agreements with 18 financial firms to stop the practice of cooperating with analyst surveys. Mr. Schneiderman requested that the firms end their participation in these surveys while his office investigates the early release of analyst sentiment. Mr. Schneiderman stated that the surveys "put the market at an unfair disadvantage." In January, the Attorney General's office reached an agreement with BlackRock to end its practice of surveying Wall Street analysts for opinions on firms they cover. Mr. Schneiderman stated that he