With Gensler in Hospital, Agency Scraps Public Vote

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has scrapped plans to publicly enact rules intended to protect customer cash after the agency’s chairman was hospitalized over the weekend.

Gary Gensler, who is overhauling an array of financial rules as head of the Wall Street regulatory agency, cracked several ribs on Sunday when falling at his Maryland home. Mr. Gensler remains in the hospital, although his spokesman called the decision “a precaution.”

The spokesman, Steve Adamske, said that Mr. Gensler “otherwise feels fine and looks forward to returning to the office very soon.” A marathon runner and mountain climber known for being a taskmaster at the agency, Mr. Gensler has “been calling and e-mailing staff asking for updates and making assignments,” Mr. Adamske said in a statement.

With its chairman laid up, the agency has canceled a public vote scheduled for Wednesday. Instead, the agency’s five commissioners will vote in private, producing a final tally by next week.

The rules are aimed at bolstering the safety of customer money, an issue that gained prominence after two major debacles erupted over the last year. In October, as the brokerage firm MF Global was collapsing, it tapped customer money to stay afloat. When bankruptcy ensued, more than $1 billion in customer cash vanished.

The problem arose again this summer, when another futures brokerage firm, PFG Best, toppled amid revelations that its chief executive had been raiding customer accounts for 20 years. The breach came to light when the chief executive, Russell Wasendorf Sr., tried to commit suicide.

The new rules for customer protection will codify a set of reforms introduced recently by the National Futures Association, the industry’s self-regulatory group. The changes will provide regulators with electronic access to customer account balances and eventually require daily reports tracking the sums.

Mr. Gensler’s agency has spent more than two years carrying out a broader overhaul of derivatives trading. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the regulatory overhaul passed in response to the financial crisis, the agency is writing more than 50 new rules to rein in Wall Street risk-taking.