CFTC Commissioner Scott O'Malia released a statement dissenting from the Commission’s approval of the rule establishing Process for a Designated Contract Market or Swap Execution Facility to Make a Swap Available to Trade under Section 2(h)(8) of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA).If a swap is "available to trade," that means that, with very limited exceptions, all trading in that swap must take place on a regulated CFTC market. According to Commissioner O'Malia, problems with the CFTC's rulemaking include: (i) that the CFTC has not allowed itself any clear method to assess whether an "available

On May 16, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in NLRB v. New Vista Nursing Rehab., ruled as unconstitutional the recess appointment process used by President Obama to fill a spot on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during a 2010 intrasession break.The Third Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, reached the conclusion based on similar reasoning as adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in its January 2013 unanimous decision invalidating three other NLRB recess appointments made in 2012 ( NLRB v. Noel Canning). These two appellate decisions raise continuing

CFTC Commissioner Scott D. O’Malia delivered a statement on Swap Execution Facilities (SEFs), explaining why he was "reluctantly" concurring with the decision of the Commission to approve the final rule. In his statement, O'Malia discussed how a SEF will allow market participants to access a more transparent market and offer innovative trading opportunities. Unlike the futures exchanges which are tied to a single clearinghouse, trades executed on SEFs can be cleared at different clearinghouses, which will provide a new competitive execution space, according to O'Malia. He also discussed what

The Futures Industry Association (FIA) announced the appointment of Jacqueline Hamra Mesa as Senior Vice President and Director of International Relations and Strategy. Ms. Mesa had been the Director of the CFTC's Office of International Affairs since 2006. See : Press Release.

SEC Acting Director of the Division of Trading and Markets John Ramsay delivered remarks at the NYC Bar Association on the Commission’s recent set of proposals on the cross-border regulation of derivatives. Equivalence vs. Substituted Compliance Director Ramsay discussed the status of international regulatory efforts, both in developing their derivatives regimes and in grappling with the cross-border regulation of derivatives trading. Two significant points that he made by way of introduction: (i) none of the other jurisdictions have proposed rules to describe how they would regulate cross