The Securities Industry Association (SIA)* provide comments to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) on a proposal governing merchant banking activities of financial holding companies (FHCs) and a proposal that would establish capital requirement rules for merchant banking and other investments in non-financial companies by FHCs and bank holding companies, Docket Nos. R-1065, R-1067. SIA shares deep concerns that in several key respects the merchant banking rules proposed by the Federal Reserve and Treasury are not in accordance with what Congress intended in enacting the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) Act.  SIA filed supplemental comments on the proposals on May 22, 2011.

*SIFMA is the product of a merger between the Securities Industry Association (SIA) and The Bond Market Association (TBMA) in 2006.