SEC Press Release The SEC announced (1) the filing of a civil action against a former executive of a clothing company for engaging in financial fraud and insider trading, and (2) perhaps more notably, the entering into of a non-prosecution agreement with the company with which he was formerly associated. The non-prosecution agreement is said to reflect the company's "prompt and complete self-reporting of the misconduct," as well as its actions in cooperating and investigating the misconduct. The non-prosecution agreement is the first entered into by the SEC since the announcement of its new

The CFTC announced the appointment of Dr. Andrei Kirilenko as the CFTC's Chief Economist. Dr. Kirilenko has been with the CFTC since 2008. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in Finance. His research has focused on the informational properties and the microstructure of financial markets. Prior to joining the CFTC, he spent 12 years at the IMF working on global capital markets issues. Most recently, Dr. Kirilenko has been working on issues related to algorithmic and high frequency trading and played a key role in the review of the unusual

Government bureaucrats are facing an unusual complaint: they are moving too quickly. "We have big staffs, but we are getting inundated and have started getting behind on trying to keep up with this stuff. . . The problem is there's one after another." said Terry Duffy, executive chairman of CME Group. Spencer Bachus and Frank Lucas, Republicans who next year will chair the US House financial services and agriculture committees, respectively, have taken up industry concerns concerning the pace of rulemaking pursuant to Dodd-Frank, writing to regulators to say they may "consider delaying

Directive 2010/73/EU of November 24, 2010, amending Directives 2003/71/EC on the prospectus to be published when securities are offered to the public or admitted to trading and 2004/109/EC on the harmonisation of transparency requirements in relation to information about issuers whose securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market, has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union on December 11, 2010. The Directive, amongst other things, increases the minimum denomination for exempt offerings in the EU from EUR 50,000 to EUR 100,000 (existing offerings are

The CFTC has promoted Andrei Kirilenko, an economist known for his role in the review of the May 6 "flash crash," as chief economist for the agency. Kirilenko, who has worked on research into how high-frequency and algorithmic trading affects markets, has been highly sought after by commissioners seeking opinions on how to use new authority to rein in computer-driven trading, and how to try to prevent another flash crash. Kirilenko joined the CFTC in 2008 after 12 years at the International Monetary Fund, where he worked on global capital markets issues. He has a PhD in economics from the