Top 50 Brokers of 2013

Five years is a long time. Think about it: In 2008, the financial markets were in upheaval, still reeling from the failure of Lehman Brothers and the infamous bail-out of the too-big-to fail firms. Since that time the U.S. Congress wrote and passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, mandating that the various regulatory agencies put in place rules that would stem some of the bad behavior that happened during the financial crisis. A lot, it seems, can change in five years.

For the derivatives industry, the financial crisis volatility that many survived was hit with customer confidence issues caused by the failures of MF Global and Peregrine Financial Group. With the new customer protection rules released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in October, the mandated residual interest rule was put in place.