On September 4, 2018, in a speech at the City Guildhall in London, Chairman Giancarlo previewed a new approach to cross-border application of Dodd-Frank swaps provisions, which will be memorialized in a forthcoming white paper.
Chairman Giancarlo began his remarks with a historical overview of cross-border swaps regulation, highlighting post Dodd-Frank reforms. He then summarized the current regulatory regime, emphasizing the substantial progress that has been made in the world’s primary swaps trading jurisdictions to implement commitments made after the 2008 financial crisis at the Pittsburgh G-20 summit.
The Chairman went on to offer a Mea culpa and an apologia, stating that the CFTC’s current approach to applying swaps rules to its cross-border activities has resulted in a number of problems. The Mea culpa was offered for the 2013 cross-border guidance which imposed CFTC transaction rules on swaps traded by U.S. persons even in jurisdictions committed to G-20 swaps reforms. Chairman Giancarlo expressed his view that such an approach “alienated many overseas regulatory counterparts and squandered important American leadership and influence in global reform efforts.” The Chairman allowed that CFTC’s “over-expansive assertion of jurisdiction” may have been understandable in 2013 when other G-20 jurisdictions had not yet implemented swaps reforms. However, today, he views the approach as increasingly out of sync with the world’s major swaps trading regimes, which have since adopted comparable swaps reforms.