The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program ("SIGTARP") issued a report discussing the Treasury's 2012 executive compensation decisions for the senior employees of corporations within the scope of the rule. SIGTARP found that the Treasury failed to manage pay at such corporations adequately. Even though the Treasury-created Office of the Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation ("OSM") set pay guidelines, SIGTARP asserted that the Treasury lacked the robust criteria, policies, and procedures to ensure those guidelines were met. SIGTARP recommends

A coalition of four trade associations (American Petroleum Institute, Independent Petroleum Association of America, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and National Foreign Trade Council) has submitted a Reply Brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in support of its petition for review of SEC Rule 13q-1, which requires resource extraction issuers to annually disclose payments made to a foreign government in connection with the issuer's commercial development of oil, natural gas or minerals. The rule, known as the SEC's "extraction rule," was adopted on August 22, 2012 by a 2-1 vote. The

The SEC Division of Corporation Finance provided no-action relief regarding a broker-dealer's pecuniary interest, as defined in Exchange Act Rule 16a-1(a)(2), in any "Insider Security" in certain transactions in the component securities of an certain exchange-traded funds ("ETF"). The relief would not be available to ETFs that are actively managed, ETFs with component securities that are issued by foreign private issuers or ETFs holding debt instruments. As to those ETFs within the scope of the rule, the relief permits broker-dealers to engage in a variety of transactions with respect to

The SEC charged Firas Hamdan, a Texas-based day trader, with defrauding fellow members of the Houston-area Lebanese and Druze communities in his supposed high-frequency trading program, and providing them with falsified brokerage records that drastically overstated assets and hid his massive trading losses. See: SEC Complaint, SEC Litigation Release, and SEC Press Release. See also: Hamdan's Brokerage Statements.

U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch has announced several staff changes for the Senate Finance Committee. The following individuals will be serving on the Committee in their respective positions as listed. Kimberly Brandt - Chief Oversight Counsel Bryan Hickman - Senior Counsel Jay Khosla - Policy Director on the minority staff of the Committee (in addition to serving as Chief Health Counsel). Additional senior staff on the Senate Finance Committee include: Chris Campbell, Republican Staff Director; Everett Eissenstat, Chief International Trade Counsel; Jeffrey Wrase, Chief Economist; and Mark Prater