On January 25, FIF and FIF members participated on a call with Gary Gensler (SEC Chair), Sai Rao (Policy Counsel to Chair Gensler) and Haoxiang Zhu (Director of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets) to discuss the FIF comment letters on the SEC’s rule proposal to modernize Rule 605. This meeting was requested by Chair Gensler. At Chair Gensler’s request, FIF will be participating on a follow-up call with Dr. Zhu and Jessica Wachter (SEC Chief Economist and Director of the SEC’s Division of Economic Risk and Analysis) on January 29. FIF has scheduled a call for the Rule 605 Working Group for Wednesday January 31 at 12 noon ET to update the Working Group on the SEC calls and discuss any next steps.

On Monday January 29 at 2 pm ET, Satish Kini and Robert Dura of the Debevoise law firm will review 2023 developments relating to anti-money laundering and sanctions regulations and key issues to focus on for 2024. FIF has invited the members of the Compliance and Surveillance Working Group and the SEC FINRA Regulations Working Group to participate on this call. If you would like to participate on this call and are not a member of either Working Group, please update your FIF profile or contact fifinfo@fif.com.

FIF has scheduled an additional call for the CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group for this week. The call will be on Monday January 29 at 3 pm ET and will focus on CAT billing and reconciliation. This will be in addition to the regularly-scheduled CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group call on Wednesday January 31 at 2 pm ET.

The SEC has scheduled an open meeting for Wednesday January 31 at 9 am ET. At the meeting, “The Commission will consider whether to adopt new rules to further define the phrase ‘as a part of a regular business’ as used in the statutory definitions of the terms ‘dealer’ and ‘government securities dealer’ under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, in connection with certain liquidity providers.” You can access the meeting from the SEC’s home page at the scheduled start time for the meeting.

The Data and Technology Committee will have its next call on Wednesday January 31 at 10 am ET to review capacity, latency and volume data for the prior month for the equity, options, currency, crypto and futures markets. During this call FIF will review (A) the SRO rule filing to change the limit up-limit down parameters for ETFs, and (B) the SRO rule filing to revise the market data governance plan.