Our Finance Group helps clients navigate the business and legal complexities of novel and multidimensional debt financing transactions. We fully understand the challenges faced by borrowers, investors and lenders throughout a company’s lifecycle, from evolving techniques in acquisition finance to the tensions inherent in distressed situations. We are the firm of choice for the most innovative and complex financing matters, including bespoke structured financings and whole-business securitizations of novel assets and restructurings of multibillion-dollar companies.
CFTC Finalizes End-user Exception to the Clearing and Trade Execution Requirement for Swaps
July 30, 2012 Read the memo
On July 19, 2012, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission published a final rule clarifying the end-user exception to the mandatory swap clearing requirements of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. A non-financial entity may elect to except from the clearing requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act any swap entered into for the purpose of hedging or mitigating commercial risk. The Final Rule clarifies which entities qualify for the end-user exception, establishes criteria for determining whether a swap hedges or mitigates commercial risk and specifies the information that must be reported to the CFTC with respect to each excepted swap. Companies with reporting obligations under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 will require board approval to elect the end-user exception. The Securities and Exchange Commission will separately issue regulations clarifying the end-user exception to the mandatory clearing requirements with respect to security-based swaps.