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In February, the CFTC issued conditional no-action relief allowing US entities to continue trading on European multilateral trading facilities that haven’t registered as swap execution facilities, so long as those platforms meet requirements that are identical to those applied in the US (view). It may not have been exactly what some European venues were hoping for, but this represented notable progress. At one point last November, following two clarifications by the CFTC that seemed to extend US rules further than ever before, it looked like the path forward would become a road less travelled.
There’s still a huge number of cross-border issues that need to be tackled – among the most urgent, Europe’s equivalence determinations for US CCPs. Under EMIR, European banks would not be allowed to act as clearing members of any CCP in a non-equivalent jurisdiction, while Europe’s Capital Requirements Regulation prevents them from applying the lowest possible 2 per cent risk-weight for cleared exposures at those venues. Together, these rules could have a devastating impact on the business of any non-equivalent clearing houses.
A comparison between US and European clearing rules throws up a number of seemingly intractable inconsistencies – for instance, a one-day margin period for futures contracts under US rules less onerous than the two days required under EMIR. Nonetheless, some have speculated that the new-found spirit of cooperation between US and European regulators may allow a compromise to be reached.
That doesn’t answer what happens elsewhere, though. Trades conducted between US and European entities account for a large portion of the cross-border universe, but there are plenty of transactions involving counterparties from other jurisdictions too – Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, to name but three. Some regulators have set out broad parameters for equivalence or substitutability determinations, but these are imprecise and lacking in detail.
Generally, regulators agree that foreign rules should be deemed equivalent if they pursue the same outcome. But beyond a pretty clear global consensus on central clearing and reporting... the desired outcomes differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Dodd-Frank, for instance, covers everything from trading, clearing, reporting and business conduct rules to broader bankruptcy and resolution proceedings. EMIR covers clearing and reporting, with trade execution covered by the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, but many other countries with smaller derivatives markets have opted to tackle clearing and reporting only.
The risk is that some national regulators will approach each outcomes-based equivalence determination as a broad, like-for-like comparison of their own regulatory and legislative framework. That tactic would likely doom any equivalence process to failure. Rather, regulators need to focus on whether the core objectives set by the G-20 are being met, taking foreign legal regimes and local market practices into account.
The trouble is getting to this point, as well as having a mechanism in place to deal with any disputes. IOSCO has suggested it may be able to play a role here, drawing up a set of principles and intermediating in equivalence determinations. This could involve peer reviews, colleges of supervisors and regulatory visits, comparable to what the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has in place for Basel III. It seems like a good idea, and could do much to resolve potential problems and ensure the global derivatives market continues to be just that: global.