Amid all the endless claptrap about interest rates, the Federal Reserve Board quietly this week proposed a rule that might help global markets sidestep widespread panic if a very large institution goes bankrupt and has lots of bilateral derivatives contracts on its books. The proposed rule would delay the immediate cancellation of qualified financial contracts… Read More >>
Regulators Could Halt Blockchain’s Progress
CFTC Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo is calling on U.S. and European regulators and policymakers to take a “do no harm approach” toward the oversight of emerging distributed ledger technology (DLT), popularized by the blockchain underpinnings for cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Otherwise, DLT’s growth is at “risk of being stymied by disparate and uncertain regulation,” says Giancarlo, who… Read More >>
CFTC Pays Whistleblower $10 Million
Does it pay to be a whistleblower? The answer to that question may increasingly be in the affirmative as the CFTC just announced an award of “more than $10 million to a whistleblower who provided key original information that led to a successful CFTC enforcement action,” officials say. “The award is the largest made by… Read More >>
GreenKey and Symphony to Test App for Capturing Voice Quotes
Symphony to Integrate Greenkey App into Messaging Startup GreenKey, creator of “an extremely thin web application” for voice-based collaboration among financial services firms, is releasing a pilot version of a “voice quote capture” application. It will be available for enterprise clients of messaging vendor Symphony Communication Services for a pilot test, say officials from both… Read More >>
Fed Wants New Credit Limits on Top Tier Firms
Global systemically important banks (G-SIBs), of the kind whose imprudent derivatives loan policies shook the global economy, will have their credit exposure restricted under a proposed new Federal Reserve Board single-counterparty-credit-limit rule. “In the financial crisis, we learned that the largest and most complex banks and financial institutions lent or promised to pay large amounts… Read More >>
Hong Kong Clarifies Rules for OTC Derivatives Trading
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) proposals on introducing mandatory clearing and expanding mandatory reporting for the second stage of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives regulatory regime is only the next stage of the territory’s staggered approach to implementing new derivatives rules. The actions were expected and sell- and… Read More >>
MiFID II: All Trading Calls Must Be Recorded
(Editor’s Note: One of the more underreported aspects of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive/Regulation (MiFID II) is the voice recording requirements. Greg Kenepp, president of Cloud9 Technologies, a cloud communications service provider, has been focused on these forthcoming requirements, which are likely to turn out to be more challenging than most operations professionals think…. Read More >>
Why Regulators Are to Blame for the MiFID II Delay
While U.S. and European authorities are finally making progress in harmonizing key rules and regulations, it’s becoming painfully clear that the lack of an initial, collaborative response among regulators to the global recession is hitting home for all securities firms. A case in point is the recently announced (and expected) new deadline for the Markets… Read More >>
Lack of Global Standards Impedes Trade Repositories: ESMA Report
The lack of global standards in the trade repository space (TR) could hinder the repository process, a finding of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in its recently published 55-page 2016 annual report, which outlines its supervisory priorities for credit ratings agency (CRA) governance as well as the quality and data access for TRs…. Read More >>
SEC and CFTC Reinforce Whistleblower Programs
U.S. regulators the SEC and the CFTC are reaffirming their commitment to make their whistleblower systems more accessible to industry participants and financially rewarding. Most recently, the SEC has given a whistleblower an award of more than $700,000 to “a company outsider who conducted a detailed analysis that led to a successful SEC enforcement action,”… Read More >>
