Title: 08-18
The Division of Market Oversight issued a letter granting no-action relief to permit the Brazilian Derivatives Exchange, BM&F Bovespa S.A. – Bolsa de Valores, Mercadorias e Futuros (BM&F), to make its electronic trading and order matching system (GTS) available to persons that have been authorized to directly access GTS from the United States without obtaining contract market designation or registration as a derivatives transaction execution facility pursuant to Sections 5 and 5a of the Commodity Exchange Act, respectively. The relief applies, subject to conditions, to (1) persons located in the U.S. that have been authorized by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to have access to a Globex terminal and that, pursuant to the BM&F-CME Order Routing Agreement, have been granted the right to directly access GTS through a Globex terminal; (2) futures commission merchants (FCM) that submit orders for execution to GTS using the GTS application programming interface (API) for proprietary accounts or from or on behalf of U.S. foreign futures and options customers; and (3) a foreign futures or options customer (authorized customer) of an FCM or a firm that is exempt from registration as an FCM pursuant to Commission Rule 30.10 (Rule 30.10 Firm) that is authorized by an entity with access rights to BM&F (authorized entity) to enter orders directly into the trading system using the GTS API; provided that the authorized entity has a clearing relationship with a BM&F Settlement Rights Holder (clearing member) and, as a requirement for and as a condition of the authorized entity’s permitting direct access to the BM&F GTS API by the authorized customer, the BM&F Settlement Rights Holder, among other things, guarantees and assumes all financial responsibility for all activity conducted through the authorized customer’s direct market access connection.