Briefings

Week InAdvance: October 26, 2015

The SEC's Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee will meet Tuesday - amid criticism from the industry and activists over the panel's makeup - to discuss SEC rules that govern the maker-taker pricing model and impose access fee caps and restrictions on locked and crossed markets. The panel will also examine recent market volatility and the regulatory framework for exchanges and other trading venues. "Of note, there is not a single non-financial public company, individual investor, retail broker-dealer or any exchanges that list operating companies on the advisory committee," executives from NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq Inc. and Charles Schwab Corp. wrote to the SEC last week, and asked that the committee be changed "to accommodate the views of a more diverse group of stakeholders." In a separate letter to SEC Chair Mary Jo White, a Washington-based advocacy group that bills itself as promoting public interest in the financial markets called on the agency to remove from the panel executives with companies that have been subject to regulatory sanctions. "It's unacceptable that an SEC committee that should be dedicated to the public interest appears to be just another insiders club dominated by Wall Street interests," Better Markets President and CEO Dennis Kelleher said in a statement commenting on his letter.

Read entire Week InAdvance: October 26, 2015