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Federal Register / Vol. 90, No. 170 / Friday, September 5, 2025 / Notices
C. Self-Regulatory Organization’s
Statement on Comments on the
Proposed Rule Change Received From
Members, Participants, or Others
protection. All submissions should refer
to file number SR–NYSEAMER–2025–
55 and should be submitted on or before
September 26, 2025.
No written comments were solicited
or received with respect to the proposed
rule change.
For the Commission, by the Division of
Trading and Markets, pursuant to delegated
authority.17
Sherry R. Haywood,
Assistant Secretary.
III. Date of Effectiveness of the
Proposed Rule Change and Timing for
Commission Action
Within 45 days of the date of
publication of this notice in the Federal
Register or within such longer period
up to 90 days (i) as the Commission may
designate if it finds such longer period
to be appropriate and publishes its
reasons for so finding or (ii) as to which
the self-regulatory organization
consents, the Commission will:
(A) by order approve or disapprove
the proposed rule change, or
(B) institute proceedings to determine
whether the proposed rule change
should be disapproved.
IV. Solicitation of Comments
Interested persons are invited to
submit written data, views and
arguments concerning the foregoing,
including whether the proposed rule
change is consistent with the Act.
Comments may be submitted by any of
the following methods:
Electronic Comments
• Use the Commission’s internet
comment form (https://www.sec.gov/
rules/sro.shtml); or
• Send an email to rule-comments@
sec.gov. Please include file number SR–
NYSEAMER–2025–55 on the subject
line.
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Paper Comments
• Send paper comments in triplicate
to Secretary, Securities and Exchange
Commission, 100 F Street NE,
Washington, DC 20549–1090.
All submissions should refer to file
number SR–NYSEAMER–2025–55. This
file number should be included on the
subject line if email is used. To help the
Commission process and review your
comments more efficiently, please use
only one method. The Commission will
post all comments on the Commission’s
internet website (https://www.sec.gov/
rules/sro.shtml). Copies of the filing will
be available for inspection and copying
at the principal office of the Exchange.
Do not include personal identifiable
information in submissions; you should
submit only information that you wish
to make available publicly. We may
redact in part or withhold entirely from
publication submitted material that is
obscene or subject to copyright
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[FR Doc. 2025–17004 Filed 9–4–25; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8011–01–P
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE
COMMISSION
[OMB Control No. 3235–0540]
Agency Information Collection
Activities; Submission for OMB
Review; Comment Request; Extension:
Rule 17a–25
Upon Written Request, Copies Available
From: Securities and Exchange
Commission, Office of FOIA Services,
100 F Street NE, Washington, DC
20549–2736
Notice is hereby given that, pursuant
to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995
(44 U.S.C. 3501 et. seq.) (‘‘PRA’’), the
Securities and Exchange Commission
(‘‘SEC’’ or ‘‘Commission’’) is submitting
to the Office of Management and Budget
(‘‘OMB’’) this request for extension of
the previously approved collection of
information provided for in Rule 17a–25
(17 CFR 204.17a–25) under the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15
U.S.C. 78a et seq.) (‘‘Exchange Act’’).
Paragraph (a)(1) of Rule 17a–25
requires registered broker-dealers to
electronically submit securities
transaction information, including
identifiers for prime brokerage
arrangements, average price accounts,
and depository institutions, in a
standardized format when requested by
the Commission staff. In addition,
Paragraph (c) of Rule 17a–25 requires
broker-dealers to submit, and keep
current, contact person information for
electronic blue sheets (‘‘EBS’’) requests.
The Commission uses the information
for enforcement inquiries or
investigations and trading
reconstructions, as well as for
inspections and examinations.
The Commission solicited comment
on the continuing collection of
information in Rule 17a–25, as required
under the PRA. A Federal Register
notice with a 60-day comment period
soliciting comments on this collection
of information was published on May
17 17
PO 00000
CFR 200.30–3(a)(12).
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21, 2025.1 The Commission received a
comment letter regarding the existing
collection of information, which is
discussed in more detail below.2
The commenter stated that certain
provisions of Rule 17a–25 are
duplicative of the Consolidated Audit
Trail (‘‘CAT’’) rules. Specifically, the
commenter stated that EBS is
‘‘duplicative of CAT, is not necessary
for the proper performance of the
functions of the Commission, and has
no practical utility.’’ 3 The Commission
disagrees.
EBS is not fully duplicative of the
CAT. It differs in substance,
functionality, and utility. EBS provides
access to transactional information for
certain fixed income products, like
bonds, that is not captured by the CAT,
as well as trade-level information that is
not included in the CAT (e.g., branch
office/registered representative number).
EBS also contains older data than the
CAT. Moreover, EBS makes it possible
for regulatory users to request certain
customer account level information that
is no longer required to be reported to
the CAT pursuant to exemptive relief
granted by the Commission.4 The
national securities exchanges and
national securities association
(collectively, ‘‘SROs’’) that are the
participants to the national market
system plan governing the CAT (the
‘‘CAT NMS Plan’’) have also recently
submitted a proposed amendment to the
CAT NMS Plan that would codify and
expand this exemptive relief 5—a step
1 Proposed Collection; Comment Request;
Extension: Rule 17a–25, 90 FR 21814 (May 21,
2025) (‘‘60-Day Notice’’).
2 See letter from Howard Meyerson, Managing
Director, Financial Information Forum (‘‘FIF’’) (July
21, 2025) (‘‘FIF Letter’’).
3 See FIF Letter, at 3. In addition, FIF raised
concerns regarding CAT costs, the security of EBS,
and possible revisions to Rule 17a–25 to establish
an automated request-and-response system
centralized through FINRA. See, e.g., FIF Letter at
3, 6–8. These comments are beyond the limited
scope of the PRA and the renewal sought by the
Commission herein for Rule 17a–25, but are being
actively considered by the Commission and its staff
in other contexts.
4 See Exchange Act Release No. 88393 (Mar. 17,
2020), 85 FR 16152 (Mar. 20, 2020) (providing
conditional exemptive relief to remove the
obligation that the CAT collect (1) individual social
security numbers or tax payer identification
numbers and (2) dates of birth and account numbers
associated with natural persons); Exchange Act
Release No. 102386 (Feb. 10, 2025), 90 FR 9642
(Feb. 14, 2025) (providing exemptive relief from the
obligation to collect names, addresses, and years of
birth for U.S. natural persons).
5 See Exchange Act Release No. 102665 (Mar. 13,
2025), 90 FR 12845 (Mar. 19, 2025) (proposing to
amend the CAT NMS Plan to codify and expand
previously-issued exemptive relief). FIF has
supported this proposal. See letter from Howard
Meyerson, Managing Director, FIF, to Commission
(July 14, 2025), available at https://www.sec.gov/
comments/4-698/4698-625367-1847814.pdf; letter
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Federal Register / Vol. 90, No. 170 / Friday, September 5, 2025 / Notices
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that if approved, would increase
regulatory reliance on requests to
broker-dealers for customer information
such as through EBS.
While there is some transactional
information in the CAT that can also be
requested through EBS, the way that
CAT information is used by regulators
differs because EBS data and
functionality supports different types of
analyses than the CAT. Because of these
differences, EBS remains a tool of great
practical utility for the Commission in
the proper performance of its functions,
including examinations, enforcement
inquiries, investigations, and market
reconstructions.
In the 60-Day Notice, the Commission
estimated for PRA purposes that it sends
approximately 10,807 electronic blue
sheet requests per year to clearing
broker-dealers that in turn submit an
average 213,233 responses.6 The
Commission further estimated that each
broker-dealer that responds
electronically will take 8 minutes, and
each broker-dealer that responds
manually will take 11⁄2 hours to prepare
and submit the securities trading data
requested by the Commission. This
yielded an annual aggregate hour
burden estimate for electronic and
manual response firms of 28,562
(213,137 × 8 ÷ 60 = 28,418 hours) + (96
× 1.5 = 144 hours), respectively.7
One commenter stated that the
Commission’s estimates of the
compliance burden do not reflect the
actual compliance burden.8 The
commenter stated that the Commission
did not consider EBS requests by SROs.
However, the SRO EBS rules are
from Howard Meyerson, Managing Director, FIF, to
Commission (Apr. 9, 2025), available at https://
www.sec.gov/comments/4-698/4698-5909751712522.pdf.
6 A single EBS request has a unique number
assigned to each request (e.g., ‘‘0900001’’).
However, the number of broker-dealer responses
generated from one EBS request can range from one
to several thousand. EBS requests are sent directly
to clearing firms, as the clearing firm is the
repository for trading data for securities
transactions information provided by the clearing
firm and the correspondent firms. Clearing brokers
respond for themselves and other firms they clear
for. There were 426,274 responses during the 24month period, for an average of 213,137 annual
responses.
7 Few respondents submit manual EBS responses.
The small percentage of respondents that submit
manual responses do so by hand, via email,
spreadsheet, disk, or other electronic media. Thus,
the number of manual submissions (approximately
96 per year) has minimal effect on the total annual
burden hours.
8 See FIF Letter at 8. The commenter stated that
the Commission provided an hours estimate but did
not provide any cost estimates. See id. Because the
Commission estimated that all hourly burdens are
internal, these do not result in an annualized cost
burden to respondents for purposes of OMB for
approval.
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independent of Rule 17a–25, which was
modelled after then-existing SRO rules.9
Accordingly, the Commission is not
including EBS requests sent by SROs in
the estimate for Rule 17a–25.
In addition, the commenter stated that
the Commission has not considered
certain burdens in connection with its
estimates, including overhead needed to
be in a position to respond to EBS
requests in a timely manner, data
storage and maintenance costs, security
costs related to protecting personalized
identifiable information (‘‘PII’’),
personnel costs related to the
management of the data, and processing
costs.10
However, the vast majority of the
information required in Rule 17a–25
involves collections of information that
broker-dealers already maintain in
compliance with existing regulations,
and the rules of the SROs (the registered
securities exchanges and FINRA)
currently require broker-dealers to have
adequate systems and procedures to
submit the EBS transaction reports.
Further, broker-dealers already maintain
all of the information required for EBS
reports pursuant to Exchange Act Rules
17a–3 and 17a–4. Therefore, to the
extent broker-dealers incur burdens or
costs related to data creation, storage,
maintenance, management, security,
and processing, such costs are either
usual and customary, or are already
accounted for by other collections of
information.11
The commenter also stated that the
Commission’s estimate of eight minutes
as an average response time for EBS
requests is ‘‘well below’’ the actual
average response time required for a
broker-dealer to respond to these
requests.12 The commenter further
stated that broker-dealers that have
acquired other broker-dealers ‘‘often
must’’ incur additional costs when
responding to requests when data is
stored in multiple systems.13 The
commenter did not provide an estimate
of the average response time for EBS
requests.
In response, the Commission
acknowledges that, in some cases, there
may be additional time associated with
the interpretation of the request,
collection of responsive information
9 See Exchange Act Release No. 44494 (June 29,
2001), 66 FR 35836, at 35837 (July 9, 2001) (Rule
17a–25 Adopting Release).
10 See FIF Letter at 8.
11 See Records to be made by certain exchange
members, brokers and dealers (OMB Control No.
3235–0033) and Records to be preserved by certain
brokers and dealers (OMB control number 3235–
0279).
12 See FIF Letter at 8.
13 See FIF Letter at 9.
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43015
(including across multiple systems), and
review of the response. Therefore, the
Commission is increasing its estimate of
the response time for electronic
responses by 25%, for an average
response time of 10 minutes. This yields
an annual aggregate hour burden
estimate for electronic and manual
response firms of 35,667 (213,137 × 10
÷ 60 = 35,523 hours) + (96 × 1.5 = 144
hours), respectively.
An agency may not conduct or
sponsor, and a person is not required to
respond to, a collection of information
unless it displays a currently valid OMB
Control Number.
Written comments are invited on: (a)
whether this proposed collection of
information is necessary for the proper
performance of the functions of the SEC,
including whether the information will
have practical utility; (b) the accuracy of
the SEC’s estimate of the burden
imposed by the proposed collection of
information, including the validity of
the methodology and the assumptions
used; (c) ways to enhance the quality,
utility, and clarity of the information to
be collected; and (d) ways to minimize
the burden of the collection of
information on respondents, including
through the use of automated, electronic
collection techniques or other forms of
information technology.
The public may view and comment
on this information collection request
at: https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/
PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=202504-3235-024
or email comment to
MBX.OMB.OIRA.SEC_desk_officer@
omb.eop.gov within 30 days of the day
after publication of this notice, by
October 6, 2025.
Dated: September 3, 2025.
Sherry R. Haywood,
Assistant Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2025–17027 Filed 9–4–25; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8011–01–P
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE
COMMISSION
[Investment Company Act Release No.
35734; File No. 812–15794]
Constitution Capital Access Fund,
LLC, et al.
September 2, 2025.
Securities and Exchange
Commission (‘‘Commission’’ or ‘‘SEC’’).
ACTION: Notice.
AGENCY:
Notice of application for an order
under sections 17(d) and 57(i) of the
Investment Company Act of 1940 (the
‘‘Act’’) and rule 17d–1 under the Act to
permit certain joint transactions
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File Modified | 2025-09-05 |
File Created | 2025-09-05 |