The SEC announced that Knight Capital Americas LLC has agreed to pay $12 million to settle charges that it violated the SEC's market access rules in an August 2012 trading incident. The SEC investigation found that Knight Capital did not have adequate safeguards in place to limit the risks posed by its access to the markets, which led to the entry of millions of erroneous orders. The SEC also alleged that Knight Capital failed to conduct adequate reviews of the effectiveness of its controls. This is the first SEC enforcement action under the market access rule, which was adopted in 2010 as

The National Futures Association ("NFA") has issued a $600,000 fine against Interbank FX LLC ("Interbank"), a registered futures commission merchant, Forex Dealer, and retail foreign exchange dealer Member, for failing to report certain trade execution data to NFA. See: NFA Complaint; NFA Decision; NFA Press Release.

The Managed Funds Association ("MFA") released the October edition of its monthly newsletter, the Policy Brief, which focused on several important industry stories regarding the MFA's advocacy for the global hedge fund industry. Included in the Policy Brief are stories detailing: the MFA's newly elected Board of Directors; a recently submitted comment letter to the SEC on Regulation D, Form D, and Rule 156; a comment letter by the MFA to the U.S. Trustee Program on rules for Chapter 11 periodic reports; and joint comment letters by the MFA and AIMA to the European Securities and Markets

The Honorable Laura Swain, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, entered a default judgment against Peter Madoff, former CCO and senior managing director at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities ("BMIS"). The complaint alleged that Mr. Madoff created stacks of compliance documents setting out "robust" policies and procedures over BMIS's investment advisory operations. The SEC found that none of the policies or procedures were implemented, and that no reviews of compliance were performed, although Mr. Madoff represented that he personally had completed the reviews. The

The MFA and AIMA submitted a joint comment letter to IOSCO in response to its consultative document on the "Application of the Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes to Non-Bank Financial Institutions." In the letter, the MFA and AIMA noted that the most effective regulatory framework to ensure that a central counterparty ("CCP") is never subject to a resolution regime is one that focuses on preventing CCP failure ex ante. The MFA and AIMA emphasized key assertions that included the following: ex ante measures should be used to address the relatively remote risk of a CCP's failure; the