On March 31, 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO) announced the release of a targeted, temporary no-action letter aimed at foreign affiliates of futures commission merchants (FCMs). This relief is meant to ease regulatory burdens in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. In short, the relief relaxes restrictions on CFTC registrants’ affiliated foreign brokers by allowing them to address the needs of the registrants’ U.S.-based customers without having to register as introducing brokers. The CFTC has now issued four waves of no-action relief. It issued the first two waves on March 17, 2020, and a third wave three days later.
Continue Reading CFTC Announces Fourth Wave of No-Action Relief in Response to COVID-19
Commodities
CFTC Announces Limited No-Action Relief in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic
This week, on March 17, 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) released two announcements (see here and here) regarding a series of no-action letters in response to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. The CFTC’s announcements come in the wake of high-profile efforts by other financial regulators to quickly address the financial and regulatory…
CFTC Settles Wheat Manipulation Case against Kraft and Mondelēz
On August 14, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois entered a consent order (the “Consent Order”)—agreed to by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”), Kraft Foods Group Inc. (“Kraft”) and Mondelēz Global LLC (“Mondelēz”)—to resolve long-running market manipulation litigation between the parties.
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Continue Reading CFTC Settles Wheat Manipulation Case against Kraft and Mondelēz
Another Federal Court Rules That Virtual Currency Is a Commodity
Last week, in a denial of a motion to dismiss, a Massachusetts district court ruled that virtual currencies are commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act (the “CEA”) and that therefore the CFTC has authority to prosecute fraud with respect to virtual currencies (see CFTC v. My Big Coin Pay, Inc., No. 18-10077-RWZ, 2018…