Speaking at the DerivOps North America conference this morning, CFTC Chairman Timothy Massad announced his agency will be issuing no-action letters providing relief for regulatory requirements concerning erroneous swap trades and swap trade confirmations. Massad said the relief is part of the CFTC’s ongoing efforts to ensure that post-financial crisis reforms in the derivatives markets… Read More >>
Elizabeth Warren Attacks Dodd-Frank Section Repeal
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren launched an attack on a provision in the omnibus, $1.1 trillion spending bill of Congress that would prevent Section 716 of the Dodd-Frank Act from ending federal government bailouts for financial services firms engaged in risky swap derivatives. Despite Warren’s call for the House of Representatives to pull the repeal, the… Read More >>
ISDA Board Picks SocGen Vet to be Chairman
The board of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has elected Eric Litvack as its new chairman, effective Jan. 1, 2015. Litvack, a member of the ISDA board since 2006, was appointed to the board’s vice-chairmanship in 2012. He is a managing director and head of regulatory strategy for Société Générale’s global banking and… Read More >>
Are You Ready for Bitcoin?
If you haven’t heard of it before, my guess is that you are likely to become more acquainted with the crypto-currency Bitcoin. “As a non-political online money, Bitcoin is backed exclusively by code,” according to the Bitcoin Foundation website. “This means that — ultimately — it is only as good as its software design. By… Read More >>
O’Malia Sets the Agenda for ISDA
Scott O’Malia, the relatively new CEO for the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), has been on the job for “some five weeks,” and he has been busy. FTF News readers will remember that O’Malia was until recently a rather vocal and active CFTC commissioner who among other accomplishments brought attention to many of the… Read More >>
TriOptima: $500T in OTC Notional Principal Eliminated Since 2003
TriOptima, a provider of post-trade services for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, reports that market participants have eliminated $500 trillion in notional principal outstanding since 2003, when it introduced triReduce, its multilateral compression service. That amount in eliminated notional principal outstanding includes “cleared and uncleared trades across a broad spectrum of products including cleared interest rate swaps… Read More >>
