ISDA Annual General Meeting, 24-26 April 2018
Gilles KOLIFRATH
Avocat en droit bancaire et financier, droit des assurances chez KPMG Avocats
It is always a great pleasure to attend the ISDA Annual General Meeting (AGM). For over 32 years the ISDA AGM has been a widely recognized event in the derivatives industry and has attracted hundreds of senior executives and regulators from over 30 countries. This year’s AGM focused on the future of derivatives markets. Interesting and valuable keynote speeches were delivered by Bill Coen, secretary of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, J. Christopher Giancarlo, Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Craig S. Phillips, counselor to the secretary of the US Treasury.
On April 26, CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo released a white paper discussing his plans for changing a number of regulations affecting the swaps market. The white paper sets out the rationale for reform in five main areas: trading, reporting, clearing, swap dealer capital, and end-user exceptions. The paper identified several specific areas where the CFTC will propose changes, particularly in the rules around swaps trading. The paper also indicated several areas where the agency is enhancing its oversight, such as resolution plans for clearinghouses. The paper does not call on Congress to change Dodd-Frank. Instead the goal is to modify the rules developed by the CFTC to implement Dodd-Frank so as to achieve a "better balance" between mitigating systemic risk and "healthy trading liquidity" and economic growth.
Mr. Giancarlo also told ISDA's 33rd Annual General Meeting in Miami that "US [central counterparties] overseas need to be regulated by US regulators, full stop." Mr. Giancarlo said he expects the US and EU will "resolve this issue on CCP supervision so we can get on to more issues that we need to clarify." He also mentioned that " For the 21st century, Regulators should have a business mindset: if markets use technologies, so will the CFTC!"