The FIF Rule 606 Working Group will meet on Tuesday March 15, 2022 at 11am ET to continue its discussion of the FINRA proposal to require Rule 606-type reporting for routes in OTC equities, including proposed next steps with FINRA.

The FIF Back Office Committee will meet on Tuesday March 15 at 2pm ET to review applicable FICC, DTC, NSCC, SEC, MSRB, OCC, IRS and FINRA updates during the past month. The spotlight presenter for the meeting will be Dianne O'Boyle of Symbiont, who will discuss Industry Solutions to Solve Credit Market Risk and Resulting Operational Efficiencies.  

The FIF Data and Technology Committee will meet on Wednesday March 23 at 10am ET to review capacity, latency and volume data for the prior month for the equity, options, currency, crypto and futures markets. The spotlight presenter for the meeting will be Lain Garret of Cboe Global Markets, who will discuss Cboe’s fixed income initiatives.

For this week, FIF has scheduled an additional call for the CAT CAIS Working Group. The call will be on Monday March 14 at 11am ET and will focus on completing the review of the CAIS CCID Industry Member Reporting Scenarios, Version 2.2 (January 28, 2022) and Version 2.2.1 (February 4, 2022) and also reviewing the March 9, 2022 updates to the CAIS CCID Technical Specifications. This will be in addition to the regularly scheduled CAIS Working Group calls on Wednesday March 16 at 11am ET and Friday March 18 at 1pm ET.

For this week, FIF has scheduled an additional call for the CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group. The call will be on Monday March 14 at 2pm ET and will focus specifically on the proposals presented by FINRA CAT to the FIF Working Group that are intended to reduce CAT operating costs. This will be in addition to the regularly scheduled Transaction Reporting Working Group call on Wednesday March 16 at 2pm ET.

The FIF Short Sales/Reg SHO/Short Interest Reporting Working Group will meet on Tuesday March 29, 2022 at 3pm ET to review and provide feedback on a first draft of a comment letter on the SEC’s recent proposal to mandate a new buy to cover order marker. 

On March 7, FIF held a webinar on Current Developments in Trading Technology. Ivy Schmerken of FlexTrade moderated the panel where timely topics such as converting voice to structured electronic data, 24-hour trading, working from home/returning to the office, outsourced trading, risk data and analytics, interoperability, and machine learning were discussed. Panelists included Matthew Brown of Blue Ocean ATS, Rajiv Kedia of FlexTrade and Mike Smith of IPC. If you were not able to attend this webinar and would like to watch the recording, you may do so here:...

FIF Short Sales/Reg SHO/Short Interest Reporting Working Group. The Short Sales/Reg SHO/Short Interest Reporting Working Group discussed the recent SEC rule proposal to create a new short interest reporting requirement, mandate a new buy to cover order marker, and require new CAT reporting modifiers for buy to cover orders and short sales that rely on the bona fide market making exception.  FIF Compliance Working Group. Satish Kini and Robert Dura from the Debevoise law firm provided an update on the recent OFAC sanctions against Russia, including recent Directives under Executive...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co announced they were unwinding their Russian businesses, becoming the first major U.S. banks to exit following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and putting pressure on rivals to follow. Operating in Russia has become harder for Western financial institutions due to international sanctions against that country. While European banks are the most highly exposed to Russia, U.S. banks still have significant exposure, totaling $14.7 billion, according to a story in Reuters news. "Goldman Sachs is winding down its business in Russia in...