The CFPB published in the Federal Register final amendments to Regulation Z regarding its "Ability-to-Repay" rule requiring mortgage lenders to make "reasonable, good faith determinations" that customers are able to repay loans, and establishing minimum requirements for making such determinations. Click hereto view our original story on the Final Rule. Effective Date: January 10, 2014. View rule release in full: 78 FR 6407.

The SEC charged five former real estate executives who defrauded investors into believing they were funding the development of five-star destination resorts in Florida and Las Vegas when they were actually buying into a Ponzi scheme. The SEC alleges that Cay Clubs Resorts and Marinas raised more than $300 million from nearly 1,400 investors nationwide through a network of hundreds of sales agents, marketing seminars, and podcasts touting the profitability of purchasing units at Cay Clubs resort locations. Instead of using investor funds to develop resort properties and units, executives used

SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher delivered a speech before the Corporate Directors Forum, in which he discussed the proper role of federal government in the corporate governance realm. In particular, Commissioner Gallagher asserted that the standard response to severe economic downturns or epochal corporate scandals is hurried and reactive federal legislation and regulation; and usually onerous, requirements as "feel good and cure all" responses to perceived problems. According to Commissioner Gallagher, such legislation and its implementing regulations are rushed out without serious

FINRA filed with the SEC a proposed rule change to delay the operative date of FINRA Rule 6121.02 ("Market-wide Circuit Breakers in NMS Stocks"), which reflects changes to the methodology for triggering market-wide circuit breakers for NMS stocks. FINRA is delaying the operative date from February 4, 2013 until April 8, 2013 to correspond to the initial date of operations for the Regulation NMS Plan to Address Extraordinary Market Volatility. See: Text of Proposed Rule Change (links externally to FINRA website).

The NFA had recently amended NFA Financial Requirements Section 4 to require FCMs that hold customer segregated funds under CFTC Regulation 1.20, customer secured amount funds under CFTC Regulation 30.7 or cleared swaps customer collateral under CFTC Regulation 22.2 (collectively, "customer segregated funds") to, in turn, instruct the depositories holding these funds on behalf of the FCMs to report the balances in these accounts on a daily basis to a third party designated by the NFA. These rule amendments are being implemented in phases. The attached notice warns FCMS that the first phase