Partner
Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP
Steven Lofchie is a Partner based in New York. He advises financial institutions and corporate clients on the securities laws and the Commodity Exchange Act, with particular focus on the regulation of broker-dealers, swap dealers, investment funds and other market intermediaries. Steven's transactional practice focuses on securities credit and derivative transactions.
Recent Articles & Comments
It was expected that the Chairs of the CFTC and the SEC would give up their roles in anticipation of a new administration.
It is notable that, while SEC Chair Gensler will leave that agency on the date of the inauguration, CFTC Behnam intends to stay in his role as Commissioner for a little bit longer (an additional two weeks), preserving the Democratic Commissioners' hold on rulemaking for that short period of time. Presumably, the incoming President will designate one of the two…
It was widely reported that President Trump would seek to replace Mr. Barr as the Vice Chair for Supervision. The Vice Chair must be a member of the Federal Reserve Board.
Rule 15c3-3 is, in structure, quite a good rule, proven successful at keeping broker-dealers safe (the failure of Lehman Brothers was not because Rule 15c3-3 did not work). However, it is operationally complicated. Going final with the amendments to the Rule during the same period where broker-dealers are required to implement cleared repo on US government securities (which will also require significant changes to firms' Rule 15c3-3 procedures) does not seem like good timing, particularly as…
A notable deletion from the list of permitted investments is bank certificates of deposit. According to the CFTC, the reason for such deletion is that the instrument was not commonly used. Another reason may have been a loss of confidence in such instruments in light of recent bank failures.