The ISDA/FIA Europe Cleared Derivatives Execution Agreement was published on 15 May 2014.  It facilitates principal-to-principal trading between an executing broker and its client of swaps that the parties have agreed are to be cleared by a CCP located outside of the US. The agreement describes the process for submitting a trade to a CCP […]

Speaking before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, CFTC acting-Chairman Mark Wetjen used the rare tactic of honesty in his appeal for extra funding in 2015. “The unfortunate reality is that, at current funding levels, the Commission is unable to adequately fulfill the mission given to it by Congress.” The bulk […]

KDPW_CCP, the main Polish clearing house, announced today that it has been authorised by its national regulators as a CCP under EMIR. It joins NASDAQ OMX and EuroCCP as the third authorised CCP to date, from a total of 22 initial applications to ESMA. Its application stated an intention to clear the following instruments: IRS\FRA\FX […]

This week’s authorisation of Nasdaq OMX as the first QCCP under EMIR should serve to concentrate the minds of the many firms who do not already have a client clearing agreement (CCA) in place. The client clearing document suite defines and governs the relationship between the client and their clearing broker. Mandatory clearing of certain […]

This week’s International Financing Review reports that BNY Mellon is closing its swaps clearing service, a mere three years after its inception. “We are exiting the derivatives clearing business in the US due to market and regulatory factors that will limit our ability to grow the business in the future,” said a spokesperson for the […]

A scant six days before the submission window closes, the Reserve Bank of India has confirmed that it will allow its country’s CCP’s to apply for ESMA approval. Once the initial application is made, the CCP’s are then granted up to 30 business days to finalise their application; ESMA then has 180 working days to […]

3rd September 2013. ESMA published its latest advice to the European Commission with respect to extra-territorial equivalence with EMIR. The advice covers: central clearing, reporting, CCPs, trade repositories and non-financial counterparties, as well as risk mitigation techniques for uncleared trades. The advice is as follows: US – equivalent in all of the above Japan – equivalent for […]

The WGMR[1] has told Risk magazine that their rules for non-centrally cleared derivatives will be published within weeks. A member of the working group said, “Publication is expected by the end of the month. A specific treatment [i.e. an exemption] for forex swaps and forwards is indeed likely”. Market participants have lobbied hard over the […]

No, not really. But a hat tip to yesterday’s article in Risk, questioning energy companies’ (perhaps rash) assumption that they will be classified as NFC- under EMIR. The regulation designates an entity as NFC- only if its 30-day rolling average position fails to trigger any of five gross notional thresholds- crossing any of which will […]