On November 21, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced unanimous approval of amendments to the required financial reports that a commodity pool operator (CPO) provides on each pool the CPO operates. The amendments contain provisions similar to the guidance previously provided through exemptive relief or no-action letters and include the following changes:

• approved use of additional generally accepted accounting standards in annual reports, account statements, and in Form CPO-PQR;
• relief from the annual report audit requirement for certain new pools with limited participants and contributions;
• relief from the CPO annual report audit requirement if pool participants are exclusively specified insiders; and
• clarification of the requirement to distribute an audited annual report at least once during the life of the pool.

The amendments will go into effect on December 27. The Federal Register notice is available here.