Committee Report on Regulation of the Capital Markets

Yesterday, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation issued a report that addresses corporate regulation and its impact on the financial markets. The 152-page report makes 32 recommendations on market competitiveness, regulatory process, enforcement, shareholder rights and Sarbanes-Oxley. In short, the Committee recommends relaxing "excessive" regulation that adds to corporate costs and may negatively impact the U.S. markets. Six of the 32 recommendations specifically relate to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which governs internal company-financial controls.

The AMG will monitor developments as some recommendations apply to the business activities of asset management firms.

Click here to read Interim Report of the Committee of Capital Markets Regulation

Major Operations Initiatives of The Asset Managers Forum

The following initiatives are currently being addressed by industry professionals who serve on various AMF committees:

Review and analysis of the recently submitted views of industry members concerning the proposed Corporate Actions Best Practices document that is being developed by The Asset Managers Forum in cooperation with custodians, broker-dealers and relevant vendors.
The Fails Management Working Group is being launched. This Group will address the takeaways from a recent buy side/sell side workshop that focused on industry-wide transaction settlement concerns.
Fixed-Income Straight Through Processing: we are promoting the AMF's industry-endorsed STP work that would help make "standing settlement instruments" available to counterparties and their agents on a real-time basis.
Further expand the use of AMF's resources to provide an industry clearinghouse of new derivatives processing suggestions; these suggestions are especially beneficial to organizations such as DTCC, SWIFT and ISITC whose products, services and recommendations are widely offered to diverse market participants.

Please contact Elisa Nuottajarvi, Douglas Taggart or Diane Trupia of the staff at 646.637.9200 to become involved in the aforementioned activities of the AMF.

AMG Participation in Upcoming Technology Summit

James Wallin of AllianceBernstein (Steering Committee member of the Asset Management Group) and Joseph Sack of SIFMA, Principal Staff Advisor to the Asset Management Group will join with Frank DeMaria of Merrill Lynch and Peter Axilrod of DTCC on a panel to discuss new frontiers in the clearance and settlement of derivatives. The Major Dealers' initiative to improve operations for credit default swaps is now over one year old, and has resulted in the emergence of several new technologies and services. Now, the New York Federal Reserve Bank's attention is turning to equity derivatives. At the same time, straight-through processing for cash products remains an elusive goal. This panel will address the future of clearance and settlement of OTC derivatives and cash products trades.