Derivs - Regulation

The U.S. House Agriculture Committee just passed Rep. Collin Peterson’s derivatives bill, with several major amendments.

The coming over-the-counter derivatives regulations in the U.S. and Europe will result in billions of dollars of new fees for brokers, clearing houses and alternative swap execution facilities, according to JPMorgan analysts.

Collin Peterson, chairman of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, is holding a hearing today at 2 p.m. to discuss his over-the-counter derivatives bill.

Barclays Capital is reviewing its employee pay structure. Richard Broadbent, an independent director, is overseeing the project and will report his findings early 2010. The firm will then decide whether it will increase staffers' basic salaries.

It's an open question whether older, non-standardized credit default swaps will need to be cleared when U.S. reforms are enacted, according to panelists at the fourth annual OTC Derivatives Operations and Processing conference in New York this morning.

Four major dealers have signed master agreements with Lehman Brothers Special Financing, allowing the bankrupt firm to buy new over-the-counter hedges.

The European Commission may require dealers to disclose both the bid/ask spreads on derivatives they are making markets in and the depth of interest from customers in those trades.

The European Commission has just released an outline of its planned regulation of the over-the-counter derivatives market.

The revised over-the-counter derivatives bill passed by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee yesterday could be a boon for interdealer brokers as it requires trades between dealers to go on exchange or so-called swap execution facilities.

Plans being drawn up by regulators in the U.K., France and Germany to apply heft capital charges to bank credit default swap trading will likely hurt end users, who will have to pay more for liquidity, lawyers and structurers note.

The Japanese Credit Determinations Committee of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association is taking a fresh look at whether consumer lender Aiful’s decision to suspend payments on outstanding debt constitutes a credit event.

U.K. high court has ruled that a collateral dispute between China Haisheng Juice Holdings Co. and Morgan Stanley International Plc be litigated in the U.K., but has left Morgan Stanley’s Asian operation exposed to litigation in China.