Federal Regulator | featured news

Opponents of AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile filed last-minute petitions to federal regulators Tuesday in hopes of blocking the $39 billion mega-deal. But they are going up against a deep-pocketed telecom giant that’s just getting started on its own campaign to influence the decision.

Regulators took new steps Wednesday to overhaul the firms whose rosy credit ratings inspired overconfidence in investments tied to toxic mortgages. The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules meant to improve the system by which such firms as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s assign ratings.

Federal regulators ordered in-depth inspections Tuesday at a nuclear power plant run by the Tennessee Valley Authority in northern Alabama after deciding the failure of an emergency cooling system there could have been a serious safety problem.

A federal watchdog criticized federal regulators' oversight of executive pay packages for top officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a report published Thursday. The top six executives at the mortgage giants earned $35 million in the last two years, according to the report from the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the mortgage giants.

Federal regulators and the top law enforcement officers in all fifty states are eyeing big changes to the dysfunctional home loan industry. If these officials have their way, borrowers who take out home loans and the investors who buy them will work closer together and find common ground to minimize foreclosures, while the middle men who are supposed to be performing that job will see their power diminished.

Major U.S. banks are about to get penalized for "critical deficiencies" and shortcomings in how they handled foreclosures, a top federal regulator said Thursday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing examining the Dodd-Frank Act six months after its congressional approval.

Verizon Communications Inc. on Thursday filed a legal challenge to new federal regulations that prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

Federal regulators are proposing to create a "Do Not Track" tool for the Internet so that people could prevent marketers from tracking their Web browsing habits and other online behavior in order to target advertising....

The federal government unveiled new proposed regulations Wednesday mandating "bolder health warnings" on cigarette advertisements and packages, according to a news release from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Federal regulators closed Bay National Bank of Baltimore, Md., the 87th U.S. bank to fail this year.