President and CEO of Jordan & Jordan, Tom Jordan wrote an article on the recent updates on CAT, including the recently announced change to a new Plan Processor. Please find the full Linkedin article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/good-week-cat-tom-jordan/ 

IHS Markit expects to gain substantial traction over the next year in the use of a distributed ledger to improve efficiency in post-trade for foreign exchanges as a result of its partnership with Cobalt, the fintech post-trade processing network. According to a story in MarketsMedia, IHS Markit, which provides critical information, analytics and solutions, announced that MarkitSERV and Cobalt are collaborating and that the firm will make a strategic investment in the fintech firm. MarkitSERV is a multi-asset class service for managing trade confirmation, clearing, allocation of block...

Broadridge Financial Solutions announced the acquisition of certain private fund regulatory reporting capabilities from PivotData, LLC, a data warehouse and compliance reporting solutions platform for the investment community, and its partner Sol Hedge, LLC. Broadridge will leverage their capabilities to help private fund asset managers meet their regulatory reporting requirements. These regulatory reporting capabilities will complement Broadridge’s existing reporting solutions, helping clients gather appropriate data, calculate what information is needed from a submission perspective...

Refinitiv, formerly Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk, has launched analytics for trading performance on its foreign exchange (FX) electronic trading platform FXall, according to a story in The Trade. Known as Trade Performance Analytics, the service provides traders with the ability to assess historical trading data with comparisons of liquidity providers and data visualization technology. Refinitiv said that as regulation and heightened conduct standards evolve, market participants are paying closer attention to their FX execution performance. The TCA tool on the FXall platform...

Luminex Trading & Analytics has rolled out a new interface for its buy-side only block trading venue following an upgrade with OpenFin, according to a story in The Trade. Luminex said that the upgrade was carried out to adopt simpler workflows and provide a more flexible user interface that allows traders to customize their workspace with various data points. OpenFin, which provides application-agnostic operating systems created specifically for finance, provided its technology for the upgrade to allow for future updates with minimal disruption to users. In November, Luminex...

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Manisha Kimmel will serve as Senior Policy Advisor for Regulatory Reporting to Chairman Jay Clayton.  In this new role, Ms. Kimmel will coordinate the SEC’s oversight of the self-regulatory organizations’ (SROs) creation and implementation of the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT).  Ms. Kimmel will work closely with the Division of Trading and Markets and other divisions and offices on the CAT and other regulatory reporting matters. Read More

FIF Staff met with FINRA on Friday, January 25 to discuss FINRA's upcoming regulatory initiatives.  Specifically, FIF and FINRA discussed FINRA Rule 4210 (Margin Requirements), TRACE, and FINRA's upcoming termination of the CTCI (Computer-to-Computer Interface).  If you have any questions pertaining to any of the above initiatives, please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

FIF CAT Tech Spec Working Group - Completed review of the scenerios section of the Technical Specification.  FIF has raised several of the issues idenified to ThesysCAT/SROs for identified have been raised for review. FIF will continue with the review of the Order Event Tech Spec on Tuesday, January 29. FIF SEC Rule 606 Working Group - Reviewed the content of the Comment Letter being prepared for submission to the SEC. FIF CAT Working Group -  Reviewed the FIF proposed CAT quote recommendations, the recently published FAQs, and various upcoming amendments to the...

High-speed trading firm Virtu Financial has said it will preserve the broker-dealer businesses at ITG following its $1 billion takeover of the agency broker, as closure of the deal approaches. In a story from The Trade News, Virtu said that certain key regulatory approvals are required before the deal can close, the acquisition is on track to close in the first quarter of this year. Virtu stated that upon closure of the deal, it intends to preserve the separate and legal entities for ITG’s client-facing broker-dealers. It added that in post-closing, Virtu will continue to...