FINRA has announced charges against a firm for charging unfair prices in municipal securities transactions and for failing to have an adequate supervisory system. FINRA found that Oppenheimer Co ("Oppenheimer") and its head municipal securities trader had priced 89 customer transactions at 5.01 to 15.57 percent above the firm's "contemporaneous" cost. FINRA also found that David Sirianni, the head trader of Oppenheimer's municipal securities, purchased municipal securities from a broker-dealer on Oppenheimer's behalf, held the bonds in inventory for at least one night, and then made the bonds

CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler delivered remarks before the Financial Stability Oversight Council ("FSOC") in which he discussed the ways that securities markets and banking laws have been reformed through Dodd-Frank. Chairman Gensler listed the major areas that have seen reform, including: ensuring that the largest financial institutions have the freedom to fail, stating that he was pleased with Moody's recent removal of the uplift in credit ratings of the largest bank holding companies "that had come from perceived government support"; tougher capital and liquidity standards, and annual stress

The CFTC is requesting public comment on a certification from Bloomberg SEF LLC ("Bloomberg") to implement available-to-trade determinations for certain interest rate and credit default swap contracts. Bloomberg submitted available-to-trade determinations to the CFTC on a self-certified basis, pursuant to CFTC Rule 37.10 ("Process for a swap execution facility to make a swap available to trade") and Rule 40.6 ("Self-certification of rules"). If Bloomberg's submission is deemed certified by operation of CFTC Rule 40.6, such swap contracts, whether listed or offered by Bloomberg or any other DCM

The SEC Division of Corporate Finance issued a standard form no-action letter relief to RBS Securities regarding a waiver request pursuant to Securities Act Rule 262("Disqualification Provisions") of Regulation A and Securities Act Rule 505 ("Exemption for Limited Offers and Sales of Securities Not Exceeding $5,000,000") and Rule 506 ("Exemption for Limited Offers and Sales without Regard to Dollar Amount of Offering") of Regulation D. The SEC stated that RBS Securities requests relief from disqualifications from exemptions available under Regulation A and Regulation D that arose by reason of

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, J. Russell George, has released a report calling for improvements to be made to the Foreign Financial Institution Registration System ("FRS") that is being developed to register foreign financial institutions, increase annual enforcement revenue, and support the IRS' new overall information system under FATCA. According to the report, the FRS is a major information technology investment for the IRS. The goal of the investigation was to determine whether the IRS' systems development approach for the FRS is sufficiently mitigating risks with