By Akayla Gardner September 15, 2021, Bloomberg

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is considering more disclosures for complex derivative transactions like those that led to the collapse of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management earlier this year. 

SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a Wednesday CNBC interview that the regulator wants to publish aggregate data on the securities that underlie investment firms’ swap positions. Gensler has already said the agency is considering rules to make hedge funds, family offices and other money managers disclose big derivative bets on stocks in quarterly SEC filings.

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By Huw Jones September 13, 2021, Reuters

Countries are facing “challenges” in rolling out final elements of tougher global bank capital rules and may need to coordinate on timing, a senior Bank of England official said on Monday.

The rollout of the rules known as Basel III began after the global financial crisis over a decade ago highlighted how banks were holding too little capital, forcing taxpayers to bail many of them out.

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By Saul Elbein September 14, 2021, The Hill

Climate change is posing a bigger risk to bank balance sheets than the subprime mortgage crisis that contributed to the Great Recession, according to the co-author of a new study on the vulnerability of commercial loans.

The study, conducted by the sustainability nonprofit Ceres and released last week, found that up to 10 percent of the value of U.S. commercial loans at leading banks is at risk of being wiped out by the effects of floods, fires, extreme heat and hurricanes.

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By Dawn Lim and Richard Rubin September 15, 2021, The Wall Street Journal

A top Senate Democrat has been circulating a proposal that would hit the rapidly growing world of exchange traded funds. Big money managers are bracing for a fight.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden’s proposal aims to tax ETFs’ use of “in-kind” transactions that currently avoids triggering capital-gains taxes. With such in-kind transactions, ETFs—bundles of securities that trade on exchanges—transfer appreciated stock, bonds or other assets to Wall Street intermediaries instead of cash.

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By Chris Matthews September 15, 2021, MarketWatch

Washington’s top stock market cop is showing no appetite to crack down on the behavior of millions of retail investors who use forums on Reddit and other social media platforms to coordinate investment strategies, sometimes at the expense of established Wall Street short sellers.

During a Wednesday interview, CNBC’s Jim Cramer asked US Securities and Exchange Commission chair, Gary Gensler, whether the SEC should step in to prevent a coordinated effort by Reddit investors to “smash” short sellers who bet against popular meme stocks like GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc.

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By Thomas Franck September 15, 2021, CNBC

Thousands of American institutions are struggling to keep business running smoothly with limited staff in the COVID-19 era.

That includes Wall Street’s top regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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By Yun Li September 15, 2021, CNBC

Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, believes regulators would ultimately take control of Bitcoin if the cryptocurrency gains mainstream success.

“I think at the end of the day if it’s really successful, they will kill it and they will try to kill it. And I think they will kill it because they have ways of killing it,” Dalio told Andrew Ross Sorkin Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” at the SALT conference in New York.full article

By Francine Lacqua and Harry Wilson September 14, 2021, Bloomberg

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey issued a fresh broadside over the European Union’s post-Brexit plans on clearinghouses, warning any upheaval risked a “real threat” to financial stability.

Speaking in a pre-recorded interview for a Bloomberg conference examining London’s future as a financial center, Bailey urged the EU to decide sooner rather than later whether the city’s dominant clearing houses can take business from clients inside the bloc, ahead of a temporary waiver lapsing in June 2022. 

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By Balazs Koranyi September 14, 2021, Reuters A digital euro, currently under design by the European Central Bank, should have a limited role initially as it could disrupt the bank sector and overly extend the role of central banking, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said on Tuesday.

“A gradual approach might make sense given the risks involved – that means a digital euro with a specific set of features and the option to add further functionalities later,” Weidmann told a conference.

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By Justin Cash September 14, 2021, Financial News Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has raised the prospect of Threadneedle Street creating its own digital currency amid fears it would be difficult to control coins created by the private sector.

As digital payments solutions continue to gain in popularity, many should be regulated given they are fulfilling the “essential public functions” of money, Bailey told a Bloomberg event on September 14.full article

By Kyle Glazier September 14, 2021, The Bond Buyer

Broker-dealers told the Securities and Exchange Commission this week they support a proposal to reduce the volume of disclosures they would need to make to customers on an annual basis, though they also suggested some tweaks to the concept.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and Bond Dealers of America submitted comment letters to the SEC in response to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s August request that the SEC approve changes to two MSRB rules.

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By Paul Kiernan September 14, 2021, The Wall Street Journal

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said he was taking a hard look at cryptocurrency-trading platforms in a hearing Tuesday in which he called for more funding for the regulatory agency.

Mr. Gensler also reiterated his openness to potentially banning payment for order flow, a practice in which stockbrokers sell customers’ trades to high speed trading platforms.

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By Jack Pitcher September 14, 2021, Bloomberg

After US Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler signaled he may overhaul bond market regulations, industry experts zeroed in on just how opaque trading can be.

Gensler, who testified Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, said in prepared remarks released beforehand that he wants to “bring greater efficiency and transparency” to the trading of corporate bonds, municipal bonds and mortgage-backed securities. He offered little detail on what new rules might look like.

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By Simon Collins September 13, 2021, Money Marketing As many firms are preparing for some form of “return to office,” there is some concern as to whether productivity of individuals will be impacted given time needed for commuting again. However, in my experience, people have been working longer and harder over the past 18 months due to the absence of a commute. Firms have benefitted in many cases from increased output generating greater revenue. Perhaps of even greater benefit has been the resilience of people working at times in very challenging circumstances and has highlighted the increased importance of one of a firm’s most valuable asset, its staff.

It is therefore not surprising that the FCA has heightened its interest in all things “people” and in particular remuneration. For larger firms this is putting the focus of attention on the remuneration and nomination committees. Recently the FCA issued a “Dear chair of the remuneration committee”...

By Louis Williams September 9, 2021, FTAdviser

Sustainable investing is on the rise as more and more people pursue investments that manage sustainability risks, align with their personal values and have a positive impact in the world.

Investors are increasingly illustrating that they care about company practices and their impact on the environment and society at large, with evidence from multiple sources indicating that sustainability is of at least moderate importance for 70% to 80% of investors.

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By Leo Almazora September 9, 2021, Wealth Professional

The Responsible Investment Association of Canada (RIA) has called on both of the industry’s self-regulatory organizations to help promote the adoption of sustainable investing by making ESG part of client discussions.

In comment letters submitted to the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA) and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) last month, the RIA argued that the SROs’ guidance and rule changes to comply with the client-focused reforms (CFRs) should include obligations for registrants to include questions about ESG in their know-your-client (KYC) processes.

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By Alexandra DeLuca September 8, 2021, Institutional Investor

More than a year and half since the COVID-19 pandemic plunged Europe into lockdown and ushered the equity research industry into a virtual environment, there are some changes on the near horizon. 

The region’s vaccine effort — sluggish at first — has now reached 70% of adults in Europe, according to European Union officials, and the end of the summer signals a return to the office for many employees, despite the looming Delta variant. 

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By Thomas Helm September 8, 2021, Practice Insight From IFLR

Meanwhile, Jennifer Keser, head of market structure and regulation for Europe and Asia at Tradeweb, stressed the European Central Bank’s (ECB) eventual response to banks moving their trading locations as a major operational and existential concern for UK-based firms in the post-Brexit environment. “We already know that the ECB would like to get a better sense of where banks book their trade,” she said. “Where that conversation ends up could impact future trade flows and liquidity.”

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By Anna Brunetti September 7, 2021, bobsguide

“The majority of financial market data is consumed through unregulated market data providers,” said pan-European exchange Euronext.

New types of unregulated data vendors and connectivity providers that “are not within the scope of MiFID II/MiFIR” are creating “new risks in relation to the collection, use, dissemination, and consumption of financial market data,” it said. 

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By Anne Plested September 7, 2021, Finextra The UK Treasury’s Wholesale Markets Review consultation paper devotes some attention to access to liquidity. In Europe, the review of MiFID II is progressing and like rules are also in scope. Tracking upcoming regulatory changes in the UK, alongside those proposed in Europe, focuses on the different treatments offered in each jurisdiction for the double volume cap on equity dark trading.

To recap, a lit venue is a market where prices are published before any execution. Trading in the dark is when there is no obligation to publish pre-trade information. The prevalence of dark trading has long raised questions about the quality of price discovery and whether it causes a decline in overall market quality. But dark pools are recognized as playing an essential part in today’s financial ecosystem. There are arguments on both sides whether dark trading is beneficial or detrimental to market quality at certain threshold...

September 1, 2021, The Trade

Okay, moving on to next….

Enhance collateral reporting: This discussion now leads us to enhancement in collateral reporting. The current collateral reporting under various regulations across asset classes does not provide a holistic view of the counterparty exposure to a regulator. It is limited to asset class under the jurisdiction of the regulator. ESMA, the European regulator had a chance to extend the collateral reporting under MiFID II to cover collateral reporting, but the focus was on transaction reporting and not on collateral reporting. Collateral reporting is based on the actual exchange of collateral settlement and does not include details of margin disputed by either counterparty. A feature like a unique trade identifier at the trade level which is a common trade identifier between two counterparties could be extended to collateral portfolio code. This will also eliminate the mapping of multiple collateral portfolio...

By Vicky Pearce August 31, 2021, Money Marketing Changes are afoot for investment firms, as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) strives to strengthen the integrity of financial markets and provide consumers with greater protection and consistency.

In January, new rules are being implemented that will see Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) firms reclassified, known as the UK Investment Firm Prudential Regime (IFPR).

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By Michael Juul Rugaard August 18, 2021, The Tokenizer

And from the beginning, they believed that the MiFID II was sufficient as a regulatory framework for this, right? 

OV: Yes. So MiFID II, in some sense, but at the time, the prospectus directives, and now the prospectus regulation. It was clear from 2017 onwards that you would simply view a token that was created on a blockchain as a piece of paper. And whatever you can do with a piece of paper, you could also do with tokens. So, for example, if you print a security note on it, it becomes a security. If you print a voucher on it, it becomes a voucher. So basically, you can do the same with tokens. This was clear rather early on, so it didn’t take much effort to get a prospectus based security token offering approved. And this cemented the legal view that the token can be a security.

However, there’s still a couple of obstacles. What’s really an issue at the moment is the secondary market for...