CFTC Chairman Massad Announces Open Meeting On Three End-User Issues

This afternoon, CFTC Chairman Timothy Massad announced a public meeting of the CFTC to take place on November 3, 2014 at 10:30 am (Eastern). The meeting will address the "further fine-tuning of [the CFTC] rules" with respect to commercial end-users. The meeting is scheduled to consider:

1. clarification to the rules regarding when forward contracts with volumetric optionality should be classified as "swaps";
2. whether the CFTC should codify in a rule prior no-action relief with respect to the CFTC Rule 1.35 recordkeeping obligations (see our prior coverage here and some of the letters here and here); and
3. whether the CFTC should require CFTC action before moving the deadline for FCMs to post "residual interest" to any earlier than 6:00 pm on the next business day after the trade date (this ultimately affects when end-users must post margin with an FCM).