The Board of Directors of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board ("MSRB") held its quarterly meeting from October 24 to 26, in which it advanced a proposal to increase disclosure of contributions by municipal securities dealers and municipal finance professionals to bond ballot campaigns, and further refined a number of investor protection initiatives. The MSRB stated that many market stakeholders would like to see the MSRB restrict bond ballot contributions by dealers in order to improve integrity of the municipal market. The decision to require disclosure of additional information is an

The meeting will be held on November 7, 2012, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The notice reports that there will be two panels, including a regulators' panel. Members of the public who wish to submit written statements in connection with the meeting should submit them by October 31, 2012. Click here to view notice in full (links externally to CFTC website).

In the latest development in the reform of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive ("MiFID"), members of the European Parliament have voted overwhelmingly in favor of additional amendments to the current draft proposals. Key measures approved by the Parliament include: ensuring that trading venues set out transparent rules for executing orders; stipulating that all high-speed transactions are valid for at least 500 milliseconds before they can be cancelled or modified; and imposing thresholds on commodity derivatives trading such as the maximum net position that traders can hold or

Comptroller of the Currency, Thomas J. Curry, gave the attached speech before the Risk Management Association's Annual Risk Management Conference. In his remarks, Curry cited a recent OCC report, the first Semiannual Risk Perspective report, which was intended to provide insights into the risks that the OCC is most concerned about. (A second Semiannual Risk Perspective report is due out later this year.) The following three broad areas of concern were laid out: the earnings challenges which many institutions face in an environment of slow growth and volatile financial markets; mortgage lending

Senators Merkley and Levin submitted a letter to the heads of the Federal Reserve Board, the Comptroller, the CFTC, the FDIC and the SEC requesting they end the delay in issuing a final version of the "Merkley-Levin Provisions" of Dodd-Frank which the letter says are "commonly referred to as the Volcker Rule." The Senators expressed frustration that, months after the deadline (July 21, 2012) by which the Merkley-Levin Provisions were to become effective, the lack of unanimous agreement among regulators with respect to the Merkley-Levin Provisions, which, according to the letter, is a result of