IRS Clearing- revisions to amendments to endorsements

ESMA yesterday published a letter from the EC’s Director General for Finance Jonathan Faull to his frequent correspondent, ESMA Chairman Steven Maijoor. The letter is a correction to its 18 December 2014 missive, which delineated the amendments necessary to secure the EC’s endorsement of ESMA’s draft RTS on the IRS clearing obligation. The revisions are minor, replacing the final two sections of the previous letter, regarding the threshold calculation for category 2 investment funds and the exclusion of non-EU intragroup transactions from the clearing obligation, with one single section. Section 2 of the December letter proposing a recital that the threshold should be calculated at the single fund level has been excised and the intragroup transaction exclusion is now a specified three years from entry into force (or following an equivalency decision) instead of the previous “sufficient period of time”. Section 1 of both letters regarding the postponement of frontloading remains unchanged. The letter is annexed with the amended and indicatively endorsed draft RTS.