FINRA Chairman and CEO, Richard Ketchum, delivered prepared remarks to the National Compliance Outreach Program for Broker-Dealers in Washington, D.C. His remarks focused on complex products and the need for firms to have heightened suitability and supervisory systems around these products and on the management by firms with conflicts of interest. In particular, Mr. Ketchum's remarks on complex products focused on structured products, closed-end funds and private placements. Features of structured products that raise concerns include their use of unsecured debt; derivative strategies featuring

FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas M. Hoenig delivered remarks on Basel III Capital to the International Association of Deposit Insurers 2013 Research Conference in Basel, Switzerland. The principal topic of his speech was the way in which banks game the risk measures that are imposed on them by regulatory authorities. He also discussed various measures of bank regulatory capital. View speech in full here (links externally to FDIC website).

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke delivered a speech at the "Maintaining Financial Stability: Holding a Tiger by the Tail" financial markets conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Stone Mountain, Georgia. Chairman Bernanke discussed the Fed's plans to avert strains in the banking system by pushing financial companies to better manage liquidity risk and reduce reliance on wholesale funding. The use of supervisory stress tests have strengthened the banking system and aided economic growth, according to Bernanke. In his speech, Bernanke discussed: (i) the state of the

The CFTC Division of Market Oversight (" DMO" ) announced the issuance of a no-action letter providing swap counterparties that are not swap dealers or major swap participants (" non-SD/MSP counterparties" ) with certain relief from the reporting requirements of the CFTC's swap data reporting rules. The DMO's no-action letter provides non-SD/MSP counterparties that are not " financial entities," as defined in Section 2(h)(7)(C) of the Commodity Exchange Act (" non-financial swap counterparties" ), with reporting relief under Part 43 (Real Time Public Reporting) and Part 45 (Swap Data

The CFTC is correcting a final rule published in the Federal Register of September 11, 2012 (77 FR 55904). That rule, 17 CFR 23.505, took effect on November 13, 2012. Subsequently, the CFTC published final rules in the Federal Register of December 13, 2012 (77 FR 74284) that recodified the Commission regulation at 17 CFR 39.6 as a new Commission regulation at 17 CFR 50.50. This correction amends cross-references in 17 CFR 23.505 to conform them with the final rules published on December 13, 2012. Effective Date: April 9, 2013. View Correction in full here (links externally to CFTC website)