US, EU reach deal on derivatives regulation rules

The U.S. and the European Union (EU) financial regulators agreed on Thursday a package of measures for policing derivatives trading and maintaining the stability for the 633 trillion U.S. dollars global swaps market. "We've taken another significant step in our mutual journey to bring transparency and lower risk to the swaps market worldwide," US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement with European Commissioner Michel Barnier. Commissioner Barnier said, "our discussions have been long and sometimes difficult, but they have always been close, continuous and collaborative talks between partners and friends." According to the statement,the CFTC plans to issue no-action relief for certain transaction-based requirements on the basis that the US-EU rules are essentially identical. In this regard, the EU's system of 'equivalence' can be applied to allow market participants to determine their own choice of rules. Under the deal, the CFTC will extend appropriate time-limited transitional relief to certain EU-regulated multilateral trading facilities (MTFs), in the event that the CFTC's trade execution requirement is triggered before March 15, 2014. Both sides emphasized that they will continue to work with each other to resolve issues on reporting to trade repositories, such as consistent data fields, access to data, and other issues related to privacy, blocking, and secrecy laws.