SECURITIES

SEC-Futures Merger Wouldn’t Save Much, GAO Says: A controversial House bill proposing to merge the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission may increase regulators’ efficiency but is unlikely to save a lot of money, the General Accounting Office said. The review, the first independent assessment of the proposal, was offered by the investigative arm of Congress before a House Banking subcommittee. Executives of the nation’s futures and commodities markets strongly oppose the plan, saying it would stifle innovation in their fast-growing markets. The GAO said the merger “may prove very difficult to accomplish” because the CFTC opposes it, and also that it could pose a risk of the much larger SEC dominating the CFTC, “favoring the securities industry’s interests over the interest of the futures markets.”