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Florida-based power company NextEra Energy is raising the ante in its bid to take over Texas transmission company Oncor, Dallas News Business reported on Friday. As the Energy Future Holdings bankruptcy unfolds in federal court, NextEra has opted to outbid itself in what appears to be turning into a bidding war with the team of Hunt Consolidated and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. NextEra proposed a merger with EFH that would give it control of Oncor, the company’s transmission arm. EFH’s power generation and retail businesses, Luminant and TXU Energy, would be spun off into a new company. NextEra and Hunt had been competing to provide debtor-in-possession financing to Oncor’s holding company, a move that would probably lead to ownership once the EFH bankruptcy concludes. Last week, the power company postponed a hearing on the financing after a warning from Hon. Christopher S. Sontchi that EFH’s arguments up until that point had not been convincing. Exactly how much NextEra is offering to merge with EFH was not clear, but the merger represents a higher valuation for Oncor than under EFH’s restructuring plan and even beat its own earlier proposal by $500 million. The deal to take over Oncor would ultimately require the approval of the Texas Public Utility Commission. Last month, state Sen. Troy Fraser said that he wanted a company with a long-term commitment to take over Oncor, which delivers power to 3.5 million Texas customers.

As the Dodd-Frank Act nears its fourth anniversary, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White said yesterday that although her agency has done much to implement the controversial law, much more needs to be done, the Wall Street Journal reported today. “In my first year as Chair of the SEC, the Commission has made significant progress in putting to work the tools provided by the Dodd-Frank Act,” White said. The agency has implemented restrictions on the proprietary activities of financial institutions through the Volcker Rule, created a new regulatory framework for municipal advisors and enacted controls on broker-dealers that hold customer assets, she said. Dodd-Frank, which marks its fourth anniversary on Monday, reduced reliance on credit ratings and led to new laws governing previously unregulated derivatives, White said. “We have also advanced significant new standards for the clearing agencies that stand at the center of our financial system,” she said. “And, I expect the Commission will soon implement critical Dodd-Frank Act rules for credit rating agencies and securitization, in addition to finalizing important new rules for money market funds.

After a 38-year debate on how to make trading costs for corporate and municipal debt transparent, regulators are making another attempt at forcing dealers to disclose how much they earn on the transactions, Bloomberg News reported today. The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board will discuss a proposal at the end of the month, Executive Director Lynnette Kelly said yesterday, after U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White asked the regulator to come up with a plan by year end. The new rules would apply to so-called riskless trades, where firms fill client orders rather than use their own money to opportunistically buy. Regulators are placing a greater emphasis on making sure smaller buyers don’t get fleeced when transacting in the corporate- and municipal-bond market that’s grown 36 percent since 2008. While stock brokers must tell investors how much they earn, bond dealers have profited from an opaque market where trades are still often completed over the telephone.

U.S. regulators are poised to complete long-awaited rules intended to prevent a repeat of the investor stampede out of money-market mutual funds that threatened to freeze corporate lending during the 2008 financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to vote on a plan as early as this month that would require certain money funds catering to large, institutional investors to abandon their fixed $1 share price and float in value like other mutual funds. The plan also would allow money funds to temporarily block investors from withdrawing their money in times of stress, or require a fee to redeem shares. Other regulators, including members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, have said such redemption restrictions could spur, rather than curb, investor stampedes. The rules are aimed at making the $2.6 trillion money-fund industry less prone to investor runs during periods of market tumult by training investors to accept fluctuations in the value of their investments, and by ensuring funds could stop a trickle of outflows from turning into a flood.

Thomas J. Butler, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Credit Ratings, said that he has referred multiple cases to the agency's enforcement division and is helping complete several industry regulations to address quality and transparency in how big debt deals are rated, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Those moves signal a potential flurry of regulatory activity involving ratings firms, which have been largely untouched as government oversight has increased in most other financial sectors in recent years. Butler, a former Citigroup Inc. executive, has been relatively quiet since launching the office in 2012 to oversee firms including Standard & Poor's Ratings Services and Moody's Investors Service. The creation of the office was mandated in the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law. His office has produced annual reports summarizing industry activity and monitored ratings firms to make sure they comply with existing rules that dictate how criteria are developed for evaluating bonds and whether internal protocols are followed, among other things. Butler's office doesn't have direct enforcement powers over firms, but monitors their activities and can make referrals to the unit headed by Andrew Ceresney, the SEC's top enforcement chief, for potential action. Butler declined to say how many referrals he has made or what firms are involved.

Citigroup Inc.’s $285 million mortgage-securities pact with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was revived as an appeals court assailed a judge’s demand for more evidence backing up the regulator’s claims, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The bank challenged U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff’s refusal in 2011 to approve the accord, which would resolve SEC claims the bank misled investors in a $1 billion financial product linked to risky mortgages, costing investors more than $600 million. Judge Rakoff, who has also criticized the agency practice of not requiring an admission of wrongdoing in settlements, said that the parties didn’t give him “any proven or admitted facts” he could use to gauge the deal’s fairness. The court yesterday cited the SEC’s purview to tailor settlements as it sees fit, saying Rakoff abused his discretion by requiring it first establish the “truth” of the allegations against the bank.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged four former officials at a Penson Worldwide Inc. unit with violations of a post-financial crisis rule on securities lending that was designed to help markets function by ensuring that trades are completed, Reuters reported yesterday. Rule 204 of Regulation SHO was adopted by the SEC in July 2009 to curb abuses in "naked" short sales, where investors sell shares short without first borrowing those shares or making sure they can be borrowed. An inability to deliver such shares in a timely manner is called a "fail." According to the SEC, Thomas Delaney, once chief compliance officer at Penson Financial Services, knew the now-bankrupt clearing services firm's procedures for selling customer margin securities were causing rule violations, yet affirmatively assisted the violations and concealed them from regulators.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges against a Massachusetts telephone-marketing company for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme that targeted primarily Dominican and Brazilian immigrants, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The agency claims TelexFree Inc. and TelexFree LLC ran an elaborate scheme under the guise of a legitimate telephone-marketing company based on voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) technology that raised more than $300 million, largely from Brazilian and Dominican immigrants in Massachusetts and 20 other states. The company, the complaint notes, claims to have raised more than $1 billion. According to the SEC complaint, the defendants sold securities in the form of TelexFree "memberships" that promised annual returns of 200 percent or more for whose who recruited new members and placed TelexFree advertisements on free ad sites.

A majority of private-equity firms inflate fees and expenses charged to companies in which they hold stakes, according to an internal review by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, raising the prospect of a wave of sanctions by the agency, Bloomberg News reported today. More than half of about 400 private-equity firms that SEC staff have examined have charged unjustified fees and expenses without notifying investors, according to a person with knowledge of the SEC’s findings who asked not to be named because the results aren’t public. While some of the problems appear to have resulted from error, some may have been deliberate, the person said. The SEC’s review of the $3.5 trillion private-equity industry began after the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act authorized greater oversight of money managers, putting many firms under the agency’s scrutiny for the first time. By December 2012, examiners had found that some advisers were miscalculating fees, improperly collecting money from companies in their portfolio and using the fund’s assets to cover their own expenses.

Bank of America Corp. should face U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims over $855 million in mortgage-backed securities, said a judge who last week advised that a Justice Department complaint over the same securities should be thrown out, Bloomberg News reported today. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Cayer in Charlotte, N.C., recommended yesterday that Bank of America’s request to dismiss the SEC case be denied. The complaint adequately alleged the bank didn’t disclose in offering documents for the securities that the bulk of the mortgages pooled in them were bought wholesale from third-party brokers, he said. Judge Cayer said in a March 27 recommendation that the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to hold Bank of America liable under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) should be thrown out. The 1989 law with a 10-year statute of limitations has become a tool for federal prosecutors bringing civil claims for alleged wrongdoing in the buildup to the 2008 financial crisis. The magistrate judge’s findings in both cases will be reviewed by U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. The bank or the government can then appeal any order by Cogburn.