CFTC Staff Letters

No-action relief from compliance with certain terms of required Regulation 30.7(c).

The CFTC’s Division of Market Oversight issued an extension of no-action letter 13-86, which provided relief in connection with certain CDS trades executed pursuant to a DCO’s CDS Settlement Price Process, providing time-limited no-action relief to DCOs and their Clearing Members from the SEF Registration Requirement and Trading Mandate under Part 37, and from various reporting requirements under Part 45, allowing the DCO to fulfill the Reporting Counterparty’s Obligations.

DMO is providing time-limited relief, subject to specified conditions, to SEFs from the “occurs away” requirement under § 43.2 until December 15, 2015, at 12:00 am EST. The relief will allow SEFs to facilitate the execution of block trades on their non-Order Book trading systems or platforms while they evaluate and address the technology and other pre-execution credit check issues associated with block trading that occurs “away from” the SEFs’ trading system or platform.

Conditional no-action relief with respect to swaps trading on certain financial markets that are licensed in Australia and overseen by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC)

The Division provided exemptive relief from certain provisions of Regulations 4.7(b) and 4.13(a)(3) that, among other things, restrict marketing to the public. This letter harmonizes these Commission regulations with Rule 506(c) of Regulation D and Rule 144A, which, as amended by the Securities and Exchange Commission pursuant to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, permit general solicitation or general advertising, subject to specific conditions.

DSIO provided a letter that exempts commodity pool operators that are registered, but only operate pools pursuant to Commission Regulations 4.5 or 4.13(a)(3), from reporting on Form CPO-PQR.

DSIO provided an exemptive letter that enables commodity pool operators to use additional recordkeepers beyond those enumerated in Commission Regulations 4.7(b)(4) and 4.23(c).

The Division issued an interpretation of CEA Section 1a(10) and Regulation 4.10(d), both of which define the term “commodity pool,” which will permit wholly owned subsidiaries of a single life insurance company to contribute their general account assets to a single vehicle formed by them, and will permit the vehicle to invest directly or indirectly in commodity interests without being deemed a commodity pool.

No-action letter permitting, subject to certain conditions, commodity pool operators of certain commodity pools that are non-registered investment companies (“Parent Pools”) that use wholly-owned trading subsidiaries to trade in commodity interests (“Trading Subsidiaries”) to consolidate the annual reports required to be submitted to the National Futures Association (“NFA”) pursuant to Commission regulation 4.7(b) or 4.22(c), as applicable, and the CPO-PQR reports required to be submitted to NFA pursuant to Commission regulation 4.27(c) for the Trading Subsidiaries with those of their Parent Pools.

Subject to specific conditions, the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight granted the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and the Federal National Mortgage Association no-action relief, such that either entity may be exempt from registration as a commodity pool operator pursuant to Regulation 4.13(a)(3) with respect to its operation of a mortgage credit risk sharing initiative described therein.