The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will hold a public meeting on Tuesday, March 20, 2012, at 9:30 a.m., to consider one Final Rule: Customer Clearing Documentation, Timing of Acceptance for Clearing, and Clearing Member Risk Management.
The meeting will be held at CFTC Headquarters Conference center, Three Lafayette Centre, 1155 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20851.
In lieu of attending the meeting at the CFTC headquarters, the agency will provide a webcast of the meeting at www.cftc.gov. Participants can also call-in to a toll-free telephone line to connect to an audio feed by calling 866-844-9416 and providing participant Passcode/Password: CFTC 2012.
Call-in participants should be prepared to provide their first name, last name and affiliation.
According to the Federal Register notice on the proposed rule published on Aug. 1, 2011, a tenet of the Dodd-Frank Act is that open access to clearing by market participants will increase market transparency and promote market efficiency by enabling market participants to reduce counterparty risk and by facilitating offset of open positions. The commission has proposed extensive regulations addressing open access at the derivatives clearing organization (DCO) level.
“Clearing members provide the portals through which market participants gain access to DCOs as well as the first line of risk management,” the CFTC said in the Federal Register notice. “Accordingly, the commission is proposing regulations to facilitate customer access to clearing and to bolster risk management through timely processing.”
The rule addresses the documentation between a customer and a futures commission merchant that clears on behalf of the customer and the timing of acceptance or rejection of trades for clearing by DCOs and clearing members.