The U.K. on May 31, 2013, issued revised draft regulations and Guidance Notes with respect to implementation of its Intergovernmental Agreement ("IGA") with the United States. Initial draft regulation and Guidance Notes were issued in December 2012. See: U.K. Draft FATCA Regulations. See also: U.K. Draft FATCA Regulations - Guidance Notes.For more developments as to FATCA, see "Current Topics - FATCA."

On May 29th, the SEC issued findings and imposed a ten million dollar fine against Nasdaq as a result of Nasdaq's technical problems in connection with the Facebook IPO and Nasdaq's responses to those problems. Chris Clearfield of System Logic will undertake a series of articles that examine the technical details of the error, NASDAQ's decision-making, and the broader implications, from the standpoint of technology and processes around technology, of the SEC's findings. The first such article, which discusses the core technology problem that led to the other problems is linked to below

The International Organization of Securities Commissions ("IOSCO") published the comment letters to the consultation paper on Principles for Financial Benchmarks that was issued on April 16, 2013. The report sought public comment on a set of high-level principles for benchmarks used in global financial markets. Because of the wide diversity of benchmarks, IOSCO also asked for public comment on a subset of more detailed principles for benchmarks having specific risks arising from their reliance on submissions and/or their ownership structure. Lofchie Comment: One of the remarkable things about

Janet L. Yellen, Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, gave a speech discussing domestic and international regulatory reform efforts in the wake of the financial crisis. After summarizing the progress that the Federal Reserve and other regulators have made in recent years, Vice Chair Yellen discussed the "principal pieces of unfinished business" in global financial regulatory reform, which she divided into the following categories: Strengthening the basic bank regulatory framework: Vice Chair Yellen highlighted the need to continue supporting the efforts of the

The MFA posted on its blog that the SEC staff and FINRA are expected to announce a new interim approach to customer margin for cleared CDS transactions. According to the MFA, this change will likely occur in two steps: "Effective as of June 10, 2013, registered broker-dealers and futures commission merchants ('BD/FCMs') shall impose initial margin as calculated by the ICE Clear Credit ('ICC') model and/or CFTC requirements, and the BD/FCMs shall impose additional margin in accordance with each firm's own risk management procedures. Under this approach, each BD/FCM must collect at a minimum