Mr. David A. Stawick
Secretary of the Commission
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Three Lafayette Centre
1155 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20581
Re: Comment Letter on the Proposed Exemptive Order Regarding Compliance with Certain Swap Regulations (RIN 3038-AD85)
Dear Mr. Stawick:
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (“SIFMA”) 1 appreciates the opportunity to provide the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “Commission”) with comments regarding the Proposed Exemptive Order Regarding Compliance with Certain Swap Regulations (the “Proposed Exemptive Order”).2
SIFMA believes that it is necessary and appropriate for the Commission to provide market participants with temporary relief from cross-border compliance with Title VII regulations, as the Commission has generally proposed in the Proposed Exemptive Order. We believe that doing so is critically important to an orderly and successful phase-in of the new swaps regulatory regime, as discussed in greater detail in our previous comment letters to the Commission.3 In this letter, we note a number of places in which we believe changes should be made to the Proposed Exemptive Order to further this goal.
As a preliminary matter, we note that although the Proposed Exemptive Order relies heavily on and cross-references frequently to the Proposed Interpretive Guidance on Cross-Border Application of Certain Swaps Provisions (the “Proposed Interpretive Guidance”),4 the two documents have been presented as functionally separate, with two separate comment letter deadlines and a likelihood of being finalized and published in the Federal Register on two different dates.5 Although, given the interrelationship between the two documents, we would have preferred to comment on both in a single letter, the difference in comment letter deadlines, the compressed timing and the rejection of our request for an extension of the deadline6 made it impossible to cover all comments in a single letter. Consequently, we intend to submit a longer and more thorough analysis of our concerns with the Proposed Interpretive Guidance before its comment deadline. In this letter we will refer to and comment on the Proposed Interpretive Guidance only as necessary for the purposes of responding to the Proposed Exemptive Order.