• Back Office Committee. On February 16, Professor James Angel of the Georgetown McDonough School of Business will discuss his recommended changes to stock lending, buy-in and settlement rules in response to the recent trading activity in GameStop.
• Tax Information Reporting Working Group. On February 23, Andrew Bernknopf, Partner at the De Castro West law firm, will discuss Taxation of Partnership Equity Compensation and Carried Interests.

On February 5 FIF and the FIF CAIS Working Group Co-Chairs participated in a meeting with FINRA CAT to discuss the creation of an industry working group to address issues relating to customer identifiers as FINRA CAT starts to move forward toward implementation of CAIS. On February 3 FIF submitted comments and questions to FINRA CAT relating to the CAT transaction-reporting system and CAIS based on issues raised by FIF Members. For the upcoming week, FIF will review the updates to the Technical Specification and Reporting Scenario documents published by FINRA CAT on February 5.

On December 23, 2020, FINRA issued a request for comment on Enhancements to TRACE Reporting for U.S. Treasury Securities. On February 2 FIF held a call to review a revised draft of the comment letter on the FINRA Regulatory Notice. The next Working Group call is scheduled for February 16 for FIF members to provide any final comments on the draft comment letter. During the call, FIF members also will discuss a rule proposal by the Federal Reserve to expand TRACE reporting for Treasuries and agencies to certain depository institutions and the potential impact on broker-dealers that currently report to TRACE. The Working Group also will discuss the Recommendation Regarding Defining “Electronic Trading” for Regulatory Purposes issued by the Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Committee (FIMSAC) on October 5, 2020 as it relates to TRACE reporting.

The series will include multiple webinars for FIF Members that will address the implementation considerations of the 898 page Rule. The kickoff panel on February 1 covered the Rule Overview and was presented by Wayne Aaron of the Vedder Price law firm in a conversation with Matt Billings of Two Sigma and Tom Jordan, Chair of the FIF Advisory Committee. This second webinar will take place today, February 8th at 4pm ET. The webinar will focus on the data: core; odd-lots; round lots; auction data; regulatory; and depth of book. The panel will include a representative from an exchange, the sell-side and the buy-side as we are joined by John Ramsay of IEX,  Rich Steiner of RBC and Rob Mohan of Wellington. The panel discussion will be moderated by Tom Jordan, FIF Advisory Chair.  If you would like to attend today's webinar, please register here.

Future topics in the series include Governance & Pricing, Competing Consolidators, Self-Aggregators, Transition and Dates, and Retail, Institutional and Buy-Side considerations.

On January 26, FIF submitted comments to FINRA CAT in response to the CAT CAIS Specifications published by FINRA CAT on January 19. On January 27, FIF submitted comments and questions to FINRA CAT based on issues raised by FIF Members.