The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the European Union (EU) have been butting heads over how to jointly regulate international swap trades for some time now. But after meeting yesterday, it seems the two regulators have finally worked out a cross-border trading agreement.
The CFTC and the EU have agreed to allow US firms to trade over European platforms, rather than forcing them to be traded through US swap execution facilities, or SEFs. The cross-border trading agreement will keep liquidity within the market, as well as ease tensions between the US and Europe over the CFTC’s foreign trading policy.
The agreement is not without restrictions however. In order for trades to be executed outside of US facilities, the country handling the trade must have standards in place that can be considered comparable to the CFTC’s. While this may seem simple enough, the requirement has so far only been met by the UK, according to the commission.
It also may be some time before other European countries are considered up to par by the Commission, as the EU isn’t planning to have its trading rules in place until 2016.
This new cross-border trading agreement is quite the turnaround for the CFTC— which was actually sued for its overbearing foreign trading policies toward the end of last year. This is no doubt due in part to former chairman Gary Gensler stepping down, and it will be interesting to see how the market fares with a more lenient CFTC.