Independent Commission on Banking The Independent Commission on Banking was created by the UK government in June 2010 and is chaired by Sir John Vickers. The Commission's role is to consider reforms relating to the capital and corporate structure of the UK banking sector to promote financial stability and competition. On 22 January 2011 Sir John Vickers made a speech at the London Business School about the Commission's work. He put forward two questions to be addressed by the Commission in its review: (i) whether, and if so how, structural reform of systemically-important institutions might

SEC Release (Enforcement) The SEC announced a settled administrative proceeding against a Merrill Lynch entity for allegedly (1) misusing customer order information to place proprietary trades and (2) charging customers undisclosed trading fees. The order alleges that a proprietary trading desk at ML traded on information gained from institutional customer orders at ML's market making desk. In addition, the order alleges that ML charged some customers markups or markdowns when it represented that it would only charge a commission equivalent to executing riskless principal trades. Notably, the

Futures Industry Association FIA filed a comment letter with the CFTC on Jan 18 in response to the CFTC's advance notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the protection of customer collateral posted with futures commission merchants in connection with the clearing of swap transactions. The CFTC's notice asked for comment on several models for dealing with "fellow customer risk", including the full segregation of each customer's collateral in separate accounts. FIA noted that the "baseline" model, i.e., the existing model used in the clearing of exchange-traded futures and options, has proven

FIA, ISDA, SIFMA FIA, ISDA, and SIFMA filed a joint letter on Jan. 18 commenting on two proposed rules issued by the CFTC. The proposed rules are aimed at preventing conflicts of interest at futures commission merchants, introducing brokers, swap dealers and major swap participants. The associations offered a number of suggestions relating to the CFTC's proposed rules regarding conflicts of interest related to research, and also commented on proposed rules regarding conflicts of interest related clearing services Date January 18, 2011 Cross References (links may require a Cabinet subscription)

SEC Press Release The SEC submitted to Congress a study (required under § 913 of the Dodd-Frank Act) in which the staff recommends, among other things, a uniform fiduciary standard of conduct for broker-dealers and investment advisers. The study states that such a standard would be "no less stringent" than the standard currently applied to advisers under the Investment Advisers Act and would apply to financial professionals that provide "personalized investment advise about securities to retail investors." The study recommends that the SEC undertake rulemaking focused on assisting broker