Claiming that it is responding to new CFTC and international regulatory standards regarding liquidity arrangements, ICE Clear U.S. ("ICUS") announced that it is changing the way members are charged for collateral and cash management activities. Beginning on January 1, 2014, ICUS will assess a 5-basis-point charge on clearing members' U.S. treasury securities balances, calculated daily and accrued monthly. This replaces existing transaction-based fees. Beginning in early 2014, ICUS will utilize external investment managers to manage cash posted by clearing members for initial margin and

Last week, ICE announced its intent to migrate LIFFE UK's contracts to the ICE trading platform ("WebICE") and ICE Futures Europe beginning Summer 2014. The first contracts migrated will be agricultural commodity contracts, followed by LIFFE UK's equity derivatives contracts during the third quarter of 2014, and LIFFE UK's interest rate contracts during the fourth. Contemporaneously with these transitions, ICE will also transfer the listing of LIFFE US' Eurodollar and DTCC GCF Repo futures contracts to LIFFE in the UK during mid-2014, while the clearing will transfer from New York Portfolio

IOSCO issued two studies on December 13, one related to regulatory issues raised by the evolution of market structure (other than derivatives markets), and the other regarding incentive fees provided by exchanges and other markets and their impact on trading behavior. In connection with its report on market structure, IOSCO noted the benefits of increased competition because of the proliferation of different types of trading spaces - exchanges, non-exchange trading market systems ( e.g., Automated Trading Systems in the U.S. and Multilateral Trading Facilities in Europe), and OTC trading

FINRA settled charges and fined a clearing firm for numerous failures to comply with anti-money laundering ("AML"), financial reporting, and supervisory obligations. FINRA found that the firm's AML surveillance program did not "reasonably address the risks of its business model." FINRA noted that accounts which COR dealt with presented a higher risk of money laundering and other fraudulent activity. The surveillance program, according to FINRA, failed to identify and address "red flags" related to its corresponding firms and transactions by customers. Specifically, FINRA noted that, for

The CFTC announced that Sayee Srinivasan has been named Acting Chief Economist. Mr. Srinivasan will be responsible for leading the CFTC's efforts in drafting policy and rulemaking, among other areas. See: CFTC Press Release.