Federal Register: Prohibition on the Employment, or Attempted Employment, of Manipulative and Deceptive Devices - Prohibition on Price Manipulation Federal Register: Agricultural Commodity Definition Cross References Dodd-Frank Act, Title VII, Secs. 721, 723 753

Dissent of Commissioner Scott D. O'Malia To Fiscal Year 2012 President's Budget Performance Plan July 8, 2011 CFTC Commissioner Scott O'Malia dissents from the CFTC's spending plan, which he complains "continues to concentrate resources on an ever-expanding staff hiring plan that is both fiscally unsustainable and detrimental to the Commission's already ailing technology programs." O'Malia argues as he has in the past for allocating more resources to technology rather than humans. "This spending plan proposes to hire 50 additional federal employees-12 of which will implement internal

British and Irish Legal Information Institute July 7, 2011 In the case of IMC Securities BV v Stichting Autoriteit Fianciële Markten, the European Court of Justice ruled on the interpretation of Article 1(2)(a), second indent of the Market Abuse Directive. In particular, the court was asked to determine whether this provision requires the price of a financial instrument to remain at an abnormal or artificial level for more than a certain amount of time in order for this constitute an abusive practice. It was decided that no minimum time period should be set, in order to protect the integrity

SEC Release No. LR-22008 June 21, 2011 The SEC announced a settled civil action against a broker-dealer, alleging that the firm misled investors into purchasing a synthetic collateralized debt obligation without informing them that a hedge fund helped select the assets in the CDO portfolio and had a short position in a significant amount of the assets. The broker-dealer agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle the charges. Cross References SEC Press Release No. 2011-131 Securities Act § 17(a)(2)-(3)

SEC Release No. LR-22031 July 7, 2011 The SEC announced a settled civil action against a broker-dealer, alleging that the firm engaged in improper conduct relating to municipal bond reinvestment transactions. Among other things, the SEC action alleges that the firm obtained information from bidding agents about competing bids for the reinvestment contracts and also set up in advance to win auctions through a rigged bidding process. The firm agreed to pay $51.2 million to settle the SEC charges, as well as another $177 million to settle parallel actions brought other federal and state