Amendments to Regulation SHO

• Date: February 24, 2010
• Source: www.sec.gov

The Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) is finalizing amendments to Regulation SHO under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) by making permanent amendments contained in Interim Final Temporary Rule 204T (“temporary Rule 204T”) of Regulation SHO, with some modifications to address commenters’ concerns. These amendments are intended to help further our goal of reducing fails to deliver by maintaining the reductions in fails to deliver achieved by the adoption of temporary Rule 204T, as well as other actions taken by the Commission. In addition, these amendments are intended to help further our goal of addressing abusive “naked” short selling in all equity securities. These goals will be furthered by requiring that, subject to certain limited exceptions, if a participant of a registered clearing agency has a fail to deliver position at a registered clearing agency it must immediately purchase or borrow securities to close out the fail to deliver position by no later than the beginning of regular trading hours on the settlement day following the day the participant incurred the fail to deliver position. Failure to comply with the close-out requirement of this final rule is a violation of the rule. In addition, a participant that does not comply with this closeout requirement, and any broker-dealer from which it receives trades for clearance and settlement, will not be able to short sell the security either for itself or for the account of another, unless it has previously arranged to borrow or borrowed the security, until the fail to deliver position is closed out.

Effective Date: This rule is effective July 31, 2009

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