Two sets of recent actions by the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority (FSA) may be of interest to insurance and financial services practitioners. First, on August 17, the FSA banned five individuals for failings related to insurance fraud. The FSA also imposed one of its largest fines of £150,000 for insurance fraud on one of […]
An August 22 article in Federal Times reported on a pilot project that the Department of Transportation is running, in collaboration with the Cornell e-Rulemaking Institute, to increase public participation in the rulemaking process through electronic media. The project reportedly includes the creation of a website with the URL www.regulationroom.org, an online moderator to field […]
On August 19, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jointly announced their issuance of revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines that outline the principal analytical techniques, practices, and the enforcement policy of the DOJ and the FTC Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (the “Agencies”) with respect to mergers […]
On August 12, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it “is proposing two rules to ensure that businesses planning to build new, large facilities or make major expansions to existing ones will be able to obtain Clean Air Act permits that address their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the spring of 2010, EPA finalized the […]
On August 13, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly issued two releases pertaining to swaps. First, the SEC and CFTC announced that their staffs “will hold a public roundtable on August 20 to discuss issues related to governance and conflicts of interest in the clearing and listing […]
On August 12th, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in Great Rivers Habitat Alliance v. FEMA, No. 09-3183, affirmed a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri that the appellants had failed to exhaust their administrative remedies before the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and that the […]
On August 10, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the FDIC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Curency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision jointly issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) regarding alternatives to the use of credit ratings in the four agencies’ risk-based capital rules for banking organizations. A joint release […]
On August 10, the Federal Trade Commission published amendments to its Telemarketing Sales Rule, which prohibits certain unfair or deceptive telemarketing acts or practices. The FTC’s summary of the amendments states that they “define debt relief services, prohibit debt relief providers from collecting fees until after services have been provided, require specific disclosures of material […]
The U.S. Department of Energy announced that the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling will hold an open meeting on August 25. The Commission, which was organized under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, will meet from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade […]
In a little-noticed announcement on July 27, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary L. Schapiro announced that the SEC will make it easier for the public to provide comments as the SEC “sets out to make rules required under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.” Under the SEC’s new process, “the […]
On August 2, Senator Mark L. Pryor (D-AR) introduced S. 3685, the Insurance Competition and Transparency Act of 2010. In brief, the bill would authorize the Federal Trade Commission, notwithstanding the provisions of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, to use the authority described in section 6 of the Federal Trade Commission Act “to conduct studies, prepare reports, […]
On August 4, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, pursuant to the Iranian Transactions Regulations, issued a press release listing 21 entities in Iran’s banking, insurance and investment, mining, and engineering industries that were determined to be owned or controlled by the Government of Iran. As guidance by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control make […]
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has posted a vacancy for a General Attorney position, GS 11/14 (excepted service). The closing date is Monday, August 2. This post was originally published on the legacy ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Notice and Comment blog, which merged with the Yale Journal on Regulation Notice and […]
Since last week, there have been two noteworthy developments that concern federal agency practices with respect to electronic information. First, on July 22, the General Accountability Office (GAO) published testimony about challenges that federal agencies face in using Web 2.0 technologies (e.g., agencies’ presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube). In brief, the challenges that GAO […]
On July 13, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in Fox Television Stations v. FCC, that the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency policy “violates the First Amendment because it is unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here.” (Slip op. at 4) While the […]