Broker dealers

SEC Chair Clayton told Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., late last week that he expects the program to sunset at year's end as scheduled.

Multiple news articles, which the SEC did not include, contradict the commission's major reasoning for why a temporary exemption for municipal advisors was needed, SIFMA said.

FINRA announced the settlement this week, in which RBC agreed to a censure while neither admitting nor denying FINRA’s findings that it violated Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board Rule G-27 on supervision. RBC was not fined.

The SEC said the court should oppose SIFMA's motion to include news articles in the proceedings, saying the group relied on only one rationale.

The number of issuers using a temporary exemption jumped to 101 in October from 35 the previous month.

During an industry briefing Tuesday, SIFMA's Kenneth Bentsen, Jr., said no matter who leads the SEC next, SIFMA will argue for an end to a temporary exemptive order.

SIFMA told a federal court that the SEC's process failed when it announced the temporary conditional exemption for muni advisors.

The MSRB also said it was looking for volunteers for two advisory groups.

The maximum allowable issuance under the SEC's temporary exemption is $20 million.

The American Securities Association's new member program will increase its membership to 71 members from 21.

The low interest rates that resulted from COVID-19 caused high levels of muni issuance and market activity, resulting in MSRB's fiscal year 2021 revenue significantly outperforming.

Eliseo Sampayo was fined $20,000, half of which will go to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board for violating its rules.

The settlement in which Roosevelt & Cross, Inc. agreed to pay $1 million is part of a now more than two-year crackdown on "flipping" arrangements.

Regulators found Stifel effected 56 pairs of pre-arranged transactions and the firm did not have a supervisory system reasonably designed to catch that activity.

SIFMA said Friday it had filed suit in Federal court in Washington D.C. asking the court to vacate the SEC’s Temporary Conditional Exemption.

Changes to the MSRB come a year after the proposal of legislation that would decrease the size of the board and increase the cooling off period for public board members.

Dealers are not seeing demand and are therefore not trading inventory this summer, sources say.

Hilltop was fined a total of $475,000, with $100,000 pertaining to violations of municipal securities rules.

VRDO reset rates in California consistently were too high to be justified, a new filing contends.

Several groups are arguing their case to keep their seats on a smaller board.