A recent bankruptcy court decision in the Southern District of New York may raise concern among brokerage firms who execute and clear brokerage transactions for hedge funds and similar investment vehicles. The bankruptcy trustee of the Manhattan Investment Fund (which the court found to be a Ponzi scheme and whose principal Michael Berger pled guilty to criminal charges) obtained summary judgment against Bear Stearns requiring it to return to the bankruptcy estate all the margin payments the fu

On December 15, 2009, the CME Group Inc. (the "CME") commenced the clearance and settlement of certain types of credit default swaps ("CDS"), including a number of Markit CDX indices and liquid single-name CDS.

Earlier this month, Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England together with Dr. Elke König, the President of BaFin, Martin Gruenberg, the Chairman of the US FDIC and Patrick Raaflaub, the CEO of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory

On 12 November, Sweden which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, put forward a compromise draft of the controversial Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive which is intended to regulate European private equity and hedge fund managers.

As has been widely reported, on 16 June 2010, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer outlined his vision for the future regulatory architecture of the UK financial sector.

Biglari Holdings Inc. has agreed to pay $850,000 in civil penalties to settle charges that it violated the premerger notification requirements of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act.

The Federal Trade Commission recently opened a formal investigation into the alleged manipulation of oil prices.

The New York State Assembly recently passed a bill intended to clarify the application of New York's Power of Attorney ("POA") law, which was revised in significant respects on September 1, 2009.

On January 23, 2014, the National Futures Association announced that it is soliciting industry comment on the concept of imposing a capital requirement on Commodity Pool Operator / Commodity Trading Advisor members and various other customer protection measures, as detailed below.

On August 14, 2012, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the "Commission" or "CFTC")’s Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight ("DSIO") released a set of responses to frequently asked questions (FAQs) concerning compliance obligations for commodity pool operators (each, a "CPO") and commodity trading advisors (each, a "CTA") under the Commission’s Part 4 rules,1 which were significantly amended several months ago.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") is seeking public comment on a petition submitted by the National Futures Association ("NFA"), a leading futures industry self-regulatory organization, to amend CFTC Rule 4.5, which provides an exclusion from the term "commodity pool operator" ("CPO") for specified persons operating certain otherwise regulated collective investment vehicles referred to therein as "qualifying entities" such as registered investment companies that engage in trading

On May 22, 2008, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced a settlement of $4.6 million with National City Mortgage Inc. (“NCM”) to settle allegations under the False Claims Act.

In a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce on March 26, Treasury Secretary Paulson addressed recent actions taken by regulators to relieve the turbulence in the financial markets, in particular, the actions taken by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (“FRB”) with regard to Bear Stearns.

Today, the President signed into law the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the "JOBS Act").

In early October 2008, Congress authorized $700 billion in government funds for the purchase of distressed assets from financial institutions through the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

On October 14, 2008, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) issued Notice 2008-100 to provide tax relief for financial institutions that sell stock to the Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) under the Capital Purchase Program (“CPP”).

On September 21, 2011, House Representative Kevin Brady (R. Texas) introduced a bipartisan bill (H.R. 2989) entitled the "Real Estate Jobs and Investment Act of 2011."

In our last UK tax Fried Frank Memorandum of 11 December, 2009, we gave an overview of the bank payroll tax proposed by the UK Government. In the days following the announcement of that measure, there has been a significant amount of unease amongst the financial community in the UK about the scope of the draft legislation imposing the measure.

The Treasury Department issued proposed regulations clarifying the meaning of the phrase "substantial risk of forfeiture".

In a recent battle with its regulator, Advanta Bank (Bank), a bank subsidiary of Advanta Corp. (Advanta) that is regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), won a victory over the agency, when a U.S. District Court ruled that the FDIC did not have the authority to issue a temporary cease and desist order (C&D) against the Bank.