Attention, screenwriters: Sharpen your pencils. We’ve reached a key moment in the FTX saga! The US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Feds have turned their enforcement lasers on Nishad Singh, “the former co-lead engineer of FTX Trading Ltd. … for his role in a multiyear scheme to… Read More >>
CFTC Mandates UPIs for Swaps Records & Reporting
Without much fanfare, the CFTC in mid-February ordered registered entities and swap counterparties to use the unique product identifiers (UPIs) supplied by the Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) for swaps in the credit, equity, foreign exchange, and interest rate asset classes to bolster transparency and compliance with CFTC swap recordkeeping and reporting requirements. In addition, the… Read More >>
New York’s Attorney General Takes On CoinEx
‘Oops!’ isn’t good enough. There are consequences if you don’t follow the rules. That goes for crypto too. The Empire State’s Attorney General has sued a cryptocurrency platform “for failing to register as a securities and commodities broker-dealer and for falsely representing itself as a crypto exchange.” A.G. Letitia James alleges CoinEx, the cryptocurrency exchange… Read More >>
Reporter’s Notebook: The SEC Stops Kraken’s Staking Service
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports that it has charged Payward Ventures, Inc. and Payward Trading Ltd., both commonly known as the crypto exchange Kraken, with “failing to register the offer and sale of their crypto asset staking-as-a-service program, whereby investors transfer crypto assets to Kraken for staking in exchange for advertised… Read More >>
SEC & CFTC Penalize Options Clearing Corp. for $22M
The Options Clearing Corp. (OCC), regarded as the largest equity derivatives clearing organization in the world, has announced settlements with the SEC and CFTC that add up to $22 million and are based on a self-reported case of shortcomings in meeting internal efforts to lower key operational risks. The cases revolve around the implementation of… Read More >>
FTF & the VX Launch the FTF Research Institute!
FTF officially launched the FTF News service on Valentine’s Day 2011, and I’m happy to say that 12 years later, we are still going strong. Perhaps for the sake of inviting good luck, on Valentine’s Day 2023, FTF and the ValueExchange (the VX) officially launched the FTF Research Institute, formed through a new partnership with… Read More >>
SEC Approves Amendments to Allow T+1 Settlement
The SEC’s commissioners voted 3 to 2 on Wednesday to pass a set of amendments and new rules that would facilitate an industry-wide move from the current trading day plus two (T+2) settlement cycle to the shorter, one-day, T+1 time frame for U.S. equity markets. The vote also endorsed a compliance date of May 28,… Read More >>
CFTC Picks a New IT Infrastructure Contractor
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reports that it has transitioned core IT infrastructure and operations support services to GovCIO, an IT and digital solutions provider to the federal government, replacing General Dynamics IT (GDIT), which had been serving the regulator since 2015. The CFTC’s $139 million, 10-year contract with GovCIO is not an outsourcing… Read More >>
Corporate Actions Processing Needs Standards & Uniformity: SIFMA
U.S. corporate actions processing needs more standards and that will require more regulation focused on the timing of corporate actions notifications, submissions, disclosers, and supporting activities, according to a new report from industry association SIFMA and consultancy Ernst & Young (EY). Smoother corporate actions processing would also be in line with the securities industry push… Read More >>
State Street to Use AWS & Azure for Overhaul & Other News
Two State Street Data Centers to Move to AWS State Street Corp. has picked Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a cloud services and data center provider while simultaneously expanding a current contract with Microsoft’s Azure cloud services in order to give clients real-time data access across State Street tools and third-party services thus streamlining investment… Read More >>
