Annette L. Nazareth

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Ms. Nazareth is head of Davis Polk's Washington DC office and leads the trading and markets practice within the firm’s Financial Institutions Group. [Full Bio]

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Last week, the SEC staff published new detailed guidance on its views of when a digital asset may be considered a security, in the form of two documents:  a guidance “framework” issued by the SEC’s Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology and a no-action letter from the SEC’s Division…
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Earlier this month, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton and Division of Trading and Markets Director Brett Redfearn engaged in a public dialogue on equity market structure issues.  In addition to reviewing three equity market structure initiatives adopted by the SEC in 2018 (the transaction fee pilot, enhanced order handling …
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The SEC recently voted to adopt amendments to Rule 606 of Regulation NMS (the “Final Rule”) that expand broker-dealers’ disclosure obligations with regard to how they handle investors’ orders. Specifically, the Final Rule requires broker-dealers, beginning May 20, 2019, (i) to provide, upon request, individualized reports in a…
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After a several-year pause, the CFTC is again re-assessing its approach to cross-border regulation of swap activities. The CFTC’s current approach is embodied in various rulemakings, guidance, orders, and agreements with non-U.S. regulators that have been adopted, issued, and entered into since 2013. The CFTC has, over the past several…
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On October 11, 2018, the SEC reopened the comment period and requested additional comments for previously proposed rules relating to capital, margin, and segregation requirements for security-based swap dealers (“SBSDs”), major security-based swap participants (“MSBSPs,” and together with SBSDs, “SBS Entities”) and, in some…
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After a several month lull that led some to question the SEC’s focus on crypto enforcement, this week saw a spate of enforcement activity involving crypto assets: several SEC enforcement actions, an SEC trading suspension order, the first FINRA cryptocurrency enforcement action, and a preliminary court decision consistent with the…
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Last week, the CFTC’s Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (“DSIO”) issued time limited no-action relief to a regional commercial bank holding company and its insured depository institution (“IDI”) subsidiaries from having to count certain loan-related swaps toward its swap dealer de minimis threshold.  Currently,…
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The CFTC unanimously approved Final Rule amendments on August 21, 2018 to the regulations governing chief compliance officer (“CCO”) duties and annual compliance reporting requirements for FCMs, swap dealers and MSPs (“Registrants”). These amendments are the first substantive rule amendments to be adopted under Chairman Giancarlo’s…
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