On Friday, August 16th, FINRA CAT released the Connectivity Supplement for Industry Members which provides industry members with direction regarding CAT connectivity options and onboarding requirements. FIF will review this guidance in detail during FIFs next CAT Tech Spec Working Group call, today at 2pm ET. If you would like to join this call, and don't have it on your calendar, please email the program office at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

On Friday, August 16th, the SEC released the FAQs FIF requested on behalf of the industry on SEC Rule 606. The FAQs will be discussed in detail on today's FIF SEC Rule 606 Working Group call at 11am ET.  If you would like to join this call, and don't have it on your calendar, please email the program office at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

FIF CAT Tech Spec Working Group - FIF reviewed the recently published Industry Member Onboarding regarding CAT Connectivity published by FINRA CAT and next steps pertaining to connectivity as well as a preview of the Phase 2d Scoping regarding paired orders (options). The meeting also focused on the newly added CAT Industry Member Reporting Scenarios document and reviewed previously clarified scenarios.  FIF Cybersecurity Working Group - FIF provided a high-level overview of Wipro's State of Cybersecurity Report 2019, which presented detailed data on the...

E*TRADE Financial Corporation announced that Chief Operating Officer, Michael A. Pizzi, will assume the Chief Executive Officer role after Karl Roessner announced his decision to leave, following 10 years of service. The appointment of Mr. Pizzi is effective immediately, while Mr. Roessner has agreed to serve in an advisory capacity through year-end to assist with the transition. Mr. Pizzi has also been appointed to the Company’s and Bank’s Board of Directors. Mr. Pizzi has been with E*TRADE since 2003 and has served in several executive roles including the Company’s Chief...

FlexTrade has teamed up with regulatory technology provider ACA Technology to add trade surveillance capabilities to its execution management system (EMS), FlexNOW. As part of the agreement, FlexTrade has integrated ACA Technology’s trade surveillance platform, known as Decrpytex, with its EMS to provide mutual clients a way to manage surveillance and compliance requirements. The Decrpytex platform helps firms identify potentially non-complaint trading and investment activity across multiple asset classes, including equities, derivatives, foreign exchange, and fixed income. Users can...

BNY Mellon has introduced extended dealing hours for Irish-domiciled exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to enable global distribution of the products, according to a story in The Trade news. Known as 24×5 ETF dealing, BNY Mellon has increased dealing hours to ETF issuers by using its transfer agency hubs in Singapore and New York. This will allow issuers to deal Irish UCITS ETFs from Monday morning in Singapore through Friday afternoon in New York. The introduction of the new dealing services will enable distribution of Irish UCITS ETFs to the Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Latin America...

Bloomberg announced that it will acquire RegTek.Solutions as part of its strategy to expand its suite of regulatory reporting and data management services. The deal will see RegTek.Solutions, which provides software for firms to meet reporting requirements, integrated with Bloomberg’s regulatory reporting hub (RHUB) and its data and trading systems. Bloomberg said the deal brings the expertise of both firms together to form a systemic service, combining its data enrichment and reporting capabilities with RegTek.Solution’s quality and control tools across various reporting...

The Trade News reports that Refinitiv is now delivering its financial data via the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform to clients in the Asia-Pacific region. Real-time data from Refinitiv’s Elektron platform will be made available to users in a move to simplify access to real-time price information and reducing the need for investment in on-premise infrastructures, while also accelerating time to market. The growth of cloud-based technologies has meant financial institutions are adapting to new data delivery models, which can provide access to historic and real-time data for...

Nasdaq announced that the equity segment of Nasdaq First North in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland has been granted the European Union’s ‘SME Growth Market’ status. SME Growth Markets are a new subcategory of multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) introduced by MiFID II to facilitate access to capital for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The SME Growth Market initiative aims to establish a pan-European regulatory standard for market operators, with certain regulatory alleviations aimed at giving European SMEs more efficient access to the public market. Market...