Briefly

The Securities and Exchange Commission has extended for six months a stopgap measure to exempt banks from certain brokerage regulations while it decides how to write the rules.

The SEC is wrestling with how to implement portions of the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which called for agency oversight of some banks that offer brokerage services. The Federal Reserve has twice opposed SEC proposals to take over those activities, which now fall under other regulators. The exemption was extended to Sept. 30.

This month members of the Senate Banking Committee urged the SEC to revise its plan, known as “Regulation B,” calling the commission’s proposal “burdensome and wholly unjustifiable.”