The staffs of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced a joint public roundtable discussion to be held on June 16 to discuss proposed definitions required under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
The Dodd-Frank Act provides that the CFTC and the SEC, in consultation with the Federal Reserve, must work jointly to further define the meaning of certain key terms including “swap dealer,” “security-based swap dealer,” “major swap participant,” and “major security-based swap participant.” Title VII also provides for the registration of dealers and major participants, and will subject them to a number of statutory requirements including capital, margin and business conduct requirements.
The SEC and CFTC have received more than 130 comment letters from the public in response to rules they proposed in December to define these terms. These public comments have helped inform the agencies about a range of issues raised by these definitions.
The roundtable is intended to supplement these comments and help further inform the agencies as they proceed with final rulemaking. The discussion will focus on such issues as:
General parameters of dealer activity.
Application of the dealer definitions among different types of asset classes.
Application of the de minimis exception from the dealer definitions.
Adequacy of the proposed major participant tests.
The roundtable will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. in the Conference Center at the CFTC’s Headquarters, Three Lafayette Centre, 1155 21st Street NW, Washington, D.C. The discussion will be open to the public with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. Members of the public also may listen by telephone by calling (866) 844-9416 (conference ID: 7731946).
Public comment files have been set up to receive input on the agencies’ proposed rules to further define certain key terms in Title VII, including the dealer and major participant definitions.
Members of the public wishing to comment may do so by:
SEC: E-mailing rule-comments@sec.gov (all e-mails must reference the file numbers 4-633 and S7-39-10 in the subject field) or through the comment form on the SEC website.
CFTC: Visiting http://comments.cftc.gov/PublicComments/ReleasesWithComments.aspx and submitting comments through the CFTC’s website.
Any statements submitted in connection with the roundtable will be made available to the public.
