Opening Statement of CFTC Commissioner Dawn D. Stump before the Commission Meeting

March 25, 2019

Thank you to the Chairman for calling this open meeting and to the staff for their diligence in preparing the items we will consider today.  I have just returned from a trip to Europe where I was visiting our regulatory counterparts across various jurisdictions and many market participants and market infrastructure providers who operate truly global businesses.  That trip reinforced my belief that every jurisdiction, including the US, needs to recommit to the global coordination envisioned at the Pittsburg G-20 Summit in 2009, when global leaders committed to work together to improve the system.  The alternative of duplicative supervision creates a new web of regulatory vulnerabilities and serves to complicate, not improve, the intended benefits of the recent reforms.

I am pleased that several items we had planned to address during today’s open meeting  were able to advance through the Commission’s seriatim process, including the comparability determinations for Japan’s and Australia’s uncleared margin requirements.  This reflects the CFTC’s commitment to a practical, outcomes-based approach to cross-border regulation of our markets.  Furthermore, the Commission continues to demonstrate its commitment to facilitating registrants’ preparations for Brexit and equipping the CFTC with the tools it needs to cooperate with, and obtain information from, UK authorities after Brexit.  These are important steps along the path forward for the regulation of our global derivatives markets.