The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the FDIC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Farm Credit Administration and the Federal Housing Finance Authority, (the "Prudential Regulators") voted to establish minimum margin and capital requirements for registered swap dealers, major swap participants, security-based swap dealers and major security-based swap participants for which one of the Prudential Regulators has primary margin authority. The proposed rules implement Dodd-Frank Sections 731 and 764, which requires the Prudential Regulators to adopt rules jointly to

The Asset Management Group of SIFMA ("SIFMA AMG") submitted comments to the CFTC and U.S. prudential regulators (collectively, the "Agencies") regarding the Agencies' proposals on margin requirements for uncleared swaps. SIFMA AMG stated that, although it supports the proposed rules' further harmonization of OTC margin requirements with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and IOSCO September 2013 final international policy framework ("BCBS-IOSCO Framework") and the EU OTC margin framework ("EU Proposal"), new elements in the proposal "diverge in potentially significant ways" from the

A broad coalition of industry groups urged regulators to exclude client collateral when calculating the total assets of banks, and argued that an unchanged leverage ratio would "reduce access to clearing and undermine one of the main goals of financial reform."

FDIC Vice Chair Thomas Hoenig argued the benefits of strengthening leverage capital requirements for derivatives. He compared two primary approaches for setting regulatory capital requirements: (i) leverage and (ii) risk-based standards. The Vice Chair criticized efforts to weaken the leverage ratio's treatment of derivatives, and declared that the alternative risk-based capital framework option has been "entirely unsuccessful." Vice Chair Hoenig delivered his remarks at the Exchequer Club of Washington D.C. In response to the argument "by some regulators" that the leverage ratio is a threat

In a blog post titled "Capital My Boy, Capital: Or, the Day of the MiFIDs," University of Houston finance professor Craig Pirrong discussed regulation of the capital structures of firms across the European Union. He suggested that the European Securities and Markets Authority's ("ESMA") regulation, which would likely subject the same type of capital requirements to firms that engage in financial intermediation as firms that serve as intermediaries in physical commodities, "is like the proverbial poor carpenter who owns only a hammer, so that everything looks like a nail." Professor Pirrong