FIF has scheduled a call for the Securities Lending Transparency Working Group for Thursday July 25 at 11 am ET. The Working Group will continue its review of a draft FIF comment letter in response to the FINRA rule filing to adopt rules for the new Securities Lending and Transparency Engine (SLATE) system. The draft comment letter also comments on the SLATE Participant Specification published by FINRA.

The Front Office Committee will have its next call on Tuesday July 30 at 11 am ET to review applicable updates and notices from the SEC, FINRA, FINRA CAT and the equity and option exchanges. The spotlight presenter will be Mark Davies of S3, who will discuss recent and upcoming implementations, including FINRA Rules 6151 and 6470 and SEC Rule 605.

FIF will host a webinar on trade surveillance on Tuesday July 30 at 3 pm ET. Holly Dito of Pershing will moderate the panel. The panelists will be Steve Bonanno of BXS, Ted Karn of The Karn Group, Chris Montagnino of Jordan & Jordan, and Jeremy Vest of S3. FIF has invited the members of the Compliance and Surveillance Working Group to the webinar. FIF will provide additional detail about the webinar content prior to the event.

The Data and Technology Committee will have its next call on Wednesday July 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. A representative from MIAX will present on the launch of the MIAX Sapphire exchange.

FIF has scheduled the next call for the Tax Information Reporting Working Group for Thursday August 1 at 3 pm ET. Stevie Conlon and other representatives from Wolters Kluwer will review and discuss the final IRS digital asset broker reporting regulations.

OFR Repo Reporting Working Group. FIF hosted two calls this past week for the OFR Repo Reporting Working Group. The Working Group reviewed a draft follow-up FIF letter to the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research relating to the new requirement to report non-centrally cleared bilateral repos. The Working Group continued its discussion of scenarios where transferred securities are substituted, a repo has multiple types of transferred securities, and securities are transferred as a pool to support a portfolio of related repos. FIF submitted this follow-up letter to the...

Cboe Clear Europe, the largest pan-European clearing house, has successfully participated in the Eurosystem’s recent exploratory work testing the use of new technologies for the settlement of wholesale transactions in central bank money. The experiments specifically aim to explore the potential of distributed ledger technology (DLT) according to a story in MarketMedia news. Cboe Clear Europe, working alongside ABN Amro Clearing Bank N.V., explored the use of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as collateral, with the intention of testing the viability of the solution for margin calls...

US-based bank Wells Fargo has become the latest clearing member to join LSEG’s LCH ForexClear. The bank has processed its first NDF trade through the service and becomes the third new clearing member to join LCH ForexClear in the past 12 months according to a story in The Trade news. Wells Fargo will now be able to benefit from ForexClear’s offering, including margin, liquidity and netting opportunities.

Clear Street has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Instinet’s Fox River algorithmic trading business in a bid to enhance its equity trading capabilities for the buy- and sell-side. According to a story in The Trade news, the transaction is expected to close in Q3 2024. Fox River encompasses a comprehensive algorithmic execution solution for US and Canadian equities. Following completion, Fox River is set to be integrated into Clear Street’s existing business.