More than two years after the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”), regulations under Title VII of that legislation have reached a sufficiently advanced point that end-users of derivatives will soon be required to take action to ensure their compliance with the regulatory scheme and their continued access to the derivatives market. In this article, we review the current state of play for end-users, the actions they must take or should consider taking, and the likely time frame for the relevant regulations’ implementation.

The considerations highlighted in this article relate to interest rate swaps, foreign exchange transactions, commodity swaps and certain credit swaps, all of which are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”). They do not generally relate to “security-based swaps” subject to the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose rule-making process has lagged behind that of the CFTC.