Dodd-Frank

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On December 18, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted to propose new rules to require resource extraction issuers to disclose payments made to foreign governments or the US government for the commercial development of oil, natural gas or minerals, as required by Section 13(q) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act).
Continue Reading SEC Proposes New Rules to Implement Resource Extraction Disclosure Rules

On September 19, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a package of new final rules and rule amendments dealing with recordkeeping and reporting requirements for security-based swap dealers (SBS dealers). In general, the SEC is requiring SBS dealers to create and maintain records with respect to security based-swaps in a manner consistent with current recordkeeping and record retention rules that apply to broker-dealers. The SEC is, however, providing alternate compliance mechanisms that will allow an SBS dealer that also is a swap dealer but is not a broker-dealer to comply with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rules instead and will allow a non-US SBS dealer to request permission to comply with its home country rules.
Continue Reading SEC Issues Security-Based Swap Recordkeeping and Reporting Rules

On September 17, the directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) approved a joint notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) with respect to the prudential regulator margin rules for non-cleared swaps. The joint form of the NPR indicates that the other prudential swap regulators (the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Farm Credit Administration and the Federal Housing Finance Agency) will all be approving the same NPR in the near future.
Continue Reading FDIC Proposes Amendments to Prudential Regulator Swap Margin Rules

On August 20, the Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) approved their version of a set of amendments intended to simplify some of the requirements of the regulations implementing Section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 (the “Volcker Rule”), which was enacted as Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Volcker Rule generally prohibits banking entities from engaging in proprietary trading and from owning or controlling hedge funds or private equity funds subject to numerous qualifications and exemptions set forth in the Volcker Rule regulations, which are identical sets of rules adopted by each of the Volcker Rule regulators (the FDIC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission). These final amendments incorporate the responses of the Volcker Rule regulators to the numerous comments they received when they initially proposed a set of amendments in 2018.
Continue Reading FDIC Approves Amendments to the Volcker Rule

On July 23, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) published a revised framework for mandatory initial margin applicable to swaps that are not cleared with a central clearing party. The key revision was the insertion of an additional year into the implementation schedule for the margin rules.
Continue Reading Delay of Final Implementation of Swap Initial Margin Rules

On July 8, the staff of the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO) of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a report containing data and analysis concerning possible exclusions from the calculation of the swap dealer de minimis registration threshold for swaps executed on a regulated exchange and/or cleared by a derivatives clearing organization.
Continue Reading CFTC Report Concerning On-Venue and Cleared Swaps

On June 21, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a panoply of final rules dealing with the following aspects of the regulation of security-based swaps (SBS):

  • Capital requirements for nonbank SBS Dealers (SBSDs) and Major SBS Participants (MSBSPs).
  • Increased minimum net capital requirements for broker-dealers that use internal models to compute net capital (ANC broker-dealers).
  • Capital requirements tailored to security-based swaps and swaps for broker-dealers that are not registered as an SBSD or MSBSP to the extent they trade those instruments.
  • Margin requirements for nonbank SBSDs and MSBSPs with respect to non-cleared security-based swaps.
  • Creation of a process for non-US SBSDs and MSBSPs to request substituted compliance with respect to the capital and margin requirements.
  • A requirement that nonbank SBSDs establish internal risk management controls compliant with Rule 15c3-4.

Continue Reading SEC Adopts Additional Rules for Security-Based Swaps

On June 21, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a package of new rules and rule amendments to establish capital, margin and segregation requirements under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The new rules address the following areas:

  • Capital requirements for security-based swap dealers (SBSDs) and major security-based swap participants (MSBSP), for which there is not a prudential regulator (nonbank SBSDs and MSBSPs).
  • Capital requirements for broker-dealers that trade security-based swaps or swaps and are not registered as an SBSD or MSBSP.
  • Minimum net capital requirements for broker-dealers that use internal models to compute net capital.
  • Margin requirements for nonbank SBSDs and MSBSPs with respect to non-cleared security-based swaps.
  • Segregation requirements for SBSDs and stand-alone broker-dealers for cleared and non-cleared security-based swaps.

Continue Reading SEC Adopts Capital, Margin and Segregation Requirements for Security-Based Swap Dealers and Major Participants