NFA Chairman Chris Hehmeyer Talks Bankruptcy Reform
Confirmations: NFA and CME’s Financial Match.com
Customer Protection Fund: Building a Better Piggy Bank
On January 10, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued an order approving the applications of 11 different spot Bitcoin exchange‑traded products (the “Approved ETPs”) to each list and trade their shares on...more
Opening the door for retail Investors: SFC-authorized virtual asset funds On 22 December 2023, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued a circular on SFC-authorized funds with exposure to virtual assets...more
The SEC Remains in Search of and Is Looking for Finders - Much has been written on the topic of finders and arrangers of securities transactions, including when a person or entity acting as a finder (i.e., someone who...more
With some frequency, Katten attorneys field questions from clients about exchange rules on off-exchange execution of futures and options on futures. This Advisory provides a high-level overview on this topic in connection...more
On June 29, 2022, Grayscale Investments, LLC petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for review of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s June 29, 2022 final order disapproving of an October...more
Regulatory Alert! A Joint Audit Committee Reminder to FCM Legal and Compliance Personnel - The Joint Audit Committee (JAC) is a club of futures exchanges, in their capacities as selfregulatory organizations (SROs). Under a...more
Recent Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) enforcement actions rely on the anti-manipulation provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) to punish misstatements made to...more
How much will water be worth in the future? We may soon find out. For years, investors have traded “futures” contracts in corn, soybeans, crude oil, silver, and gold. A futures contract is simply an enforceable agreement...more
On August 27, 2020, Judge George B. Daniels of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings made by financial institutions facing benchmark-rigging...more
Taxpayers who hold virtual currency positions may be subject to the tax straddle rules that require them to defer losses on one offsetting position to the extent of unrecognized gain on other offsetting positions. This...more
Special tax rules require taxpayers to treat gains on certain virtual currency positions as taxable even though they still hold their positions. These rules apply to futures and options that qualify as section 1256 contracts,...more
Bass, Berry & Sims attorney Chris Lazarini reviewed a case in which a putative class of individuals that transacted certain Korean futures contracts on the Korea Exchange through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Globex...more
The U.S. equity, options and futures markets have adopted market-wide circuit breakers that automatically halt trading across markets in the event of severe market declines, as measured by certain benchmarks against the S&P...more
A proprietary trading firm was sanctioned by a sixth futures-industry regulator for purported spoofing trades by one of three employees many years ago. For the employees’ aggregate alleged misconduct, the firm was first...more
Fiat Chrysler and France’s Peugeot are in the midst of merger talks that, if finalized, could “create a nearly $50 billion trans-Atlantic auto giant.” One option being bandied about in the “fluid” talks is an “all-share...more
On April 11, 2019, CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX collectively published potentially significant revisions to the guidance on the CME Globex pre-open process. The pre-open period is a set time before the trading session opens...more
Some reaction to the HQ2 x2 news, including what a pair of new tech hubs actually means for the cities that have thrown out the red carpet to Amazon and other technology giants....more
More on yesterday’s news of a split power-generation division at GE, including why fixing the ailing business is such an important task for new CEO Larry Culp and what federal criminal and civil accounting probes mean for the...more
A trader who was summarily banned in August 2016 from all CME Group exchanges for 60 days on an emergency basis agreed to pay a fine and be banned for an additional 45 days to resolve disciplinary charges that he purportedly...more
Last week, a senior official of the Securities and Exchange Commission said that Bitcoin and Ether are not securities and that there might be circumstances when a utility token is also not a security. The same official and...more
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued guidance to registered trading facilities and clearinghouses related to the listing of new derivatives contracts based on virtual currencies that contained a cryptic warning,...more
In their testimony before the U. S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (the “Committee”), Chairman Jay Clayton of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo of the...more
CFTC Issues Explanation of Its Oversight and Approach to Virtual Currency Markets; Texas Securities Board Enjoins Initial Coin Offering: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a “Backgrounder” last week, summarizing...more
After lingering on the periphery of financial markets for the past several years, cryptocurrency has finally started to move into the mainstream. While the explosion in Bitcoin’s value dominated the news headlines,...more
Major derivatives market operators CBOE Holdings and CME Group have jumped into the digital currency fray within the last two weeks by launching cash-settled bitcoin futures contracts. The exchanges recently cleared de facto...more