Securities and Exchange Commission 2009 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Securities and Exchange Commission is adopting amendments to the form used by mutual funds to register under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and to offer their securities under the Securities Act of 1933 in order to enhance the disclosures that are provided to mutual fund investors. The amendments require key information to appear in plain English in a standardized order at the front of the mutual fund statutory prospectus. The Commission is also adopting rule amendments that permit a person to satisfy its mutual fund prospectus delivery obligations under section 5(b)(2) of the Securities Act by sending or giving the key information directly to investors in the form of a summary prospectus and providing the statutory prospectus on an Internet Web site. Upon an investor's request, mutual funds are also required to send the statutory prospectus to the investor. These amendments are intended to improve mutual fund disclosure by providing investors with key information in plain English in a clear and concise format, while enhancing the means of delivering more detailed information to investors. Finally, the Commission is adopting additional amendments that are intended to result in the disclosure of more useful information to investors who purchase shares of exchange- traded funds on national securities exchanges.

We are adopting interim final temporary rules providing exemptions under the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Trust Indenture Act of 1939 for certain credit default swaps to facilitate the operation of one or more central counterparties for those credit default swaps. The interim final temporary rules define such credit default swaps as ``eligible credit default swaps'' and exempt them from all provisions of the Securities Act, other than the Section 17(a) anti-fraud provisions, as well as from Exchange Act registration requirements and from the provisions of the Trust Indenture Act, provided certain conditions are met. Our interim final temporary rules also define as a ``qualified purchaser,'' for purposes of the ``covered securities'' provisions of Section 18 of the Securities Act, any ``eligible contract participant,'' as defined in Section 1a(12) of the Commodity Exchange Act (``CEA''), other than a person who is an eligible contract participant under Section 1a(12)(C) of the CEA, to whom a sale of a eligible credit default swap is made in reliance on the interim final temporary Securities Act exemption.