SEC Roundup: Regulator Addresses CDS Portfolio Margin Program & Ex-Commission Officials Want DC Circuit to Grant SIPC Protection to Stanford Ponzi Scam Victims

Ex-Commission Officials, Others Want DC Circuit to Grant Stanford Ponzi Scam Victims SIPC Protection
Former SEC Officials, law professors, and trade groups are among those pressing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reject the regulator’s bid to compel Securities Investor Protection Corporation coverage for the investors who were bilked in R. Allen Stanford’s $7 billion Ponzi scam. Inclusion under the Securities Investor Protection Act would allow the fraud victims to obtain reimbursement for losses.

However, SIPC, which is a federally mandated non-profit corporation, doesn’t believe that the Stanford investors, who purchased certificates of deposit from Stanford International Bank Ltd. in Antigua, fall under this protection. Following a failure to act on the SEC’s request to initiate liquidation proceedings for brokerage firm Stanford Group Co., the regulator asked the court for a novel order that would make the organization comply.

Last year, the district court rejected the SEC’s application, finding that Stanford’s investors were not, for Securities Investor Protection Act purposes, covered. The agency then went to the DC Circuit.

Now, in an amicus brief filing, the academics and ex-SEC officials, including Paul Atkins and Joseph Grundfest, are arguing that the appeals court should turn down the regulator’s bid to expand who is “covered through SIPC” because it would not be in line with statutory history, “contravenes” the statute’s “plan language,” and is in conflict with over four decades of judicial precedent.

SEC Division of Trading and Markets Address Credit Default SwapsPortfolio Margin Program Questions
In other SEC news, its Division of Trading and Markets recently addressed questions related to temporary approvals that were given to several brokerage firms/ futures commission merchants that allow their involvement in a program that would mix and position portfolio margin customer positions in cleared credit default swaps.

The SEC is now granting conditional exemptive relief from certain 1934 Securities Exchange Act requirements related to a program that would portfolio and mix margin customer positions in certain cleared CDSs. In March, the Commission gave conditional approval to Goldman Sachs & Co. (GS), J.P. Morgan Securities LLC (JPM), and five other banks to take part in the program. They now can temporarily determine the portfolio margin figures for client positions in commingled CDs according to a model created by ICE Clear Credit, the largest credit default swaps clearing house in the world, while division staff assess the financial firms’ margin methodologies.

Now, ICE Clear Credit participants have questions. They want to know what is the margin treatment of a portfolio that has just single-name CDS positions as well as what is the clearing participants’ affiliates’ margin treatment. Responding, SEC division staff said that a FCM/BD client account that has just single-name CD positions would be subject to applicable margin requirements per FINRA Rule 4240. They also said that BD/FCM clearing participants have to deal with affiliates’ single-name CD positions as if they were “customer positions” for margin purposes. SEC staff said that this is in line with FINRA and Commission broker-dealer financial responsibility rules regarding how affiliates are to be treated.

Read the SEC’s Response to Questions About CDS Portfolio Margin Program (PDF)

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FINRA Bars Former Wells Fargo Advisors Broker that Bilked Child with Cerebral Palsy, Stockbroker Fraud Blog, April 26, 2012