Newsletter June 09: US agencies are pressed to harmonise derivative rules

WASHINGTON – “Comprehensive regulation” of the huge over-the-counter (OTC) derivative markets, announced as part of the Obama Administration’s wider, June 17, financial regulatory reform in the US, contains few elements that were not already flagged in the package of measures announced by the Treasury a month earlier. The main new element is the details of how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are going to share responsibility for regulating the OTC derivatives market. It had already become clear that the CFTC had succeeded in its rearguard action to block the much-canvassed merger of the two regulators.