NFA Board of Directors Candidate Statement Brendan R. Kalb, General Counsel & Managing Director, AQR Capital Management, LLC This is a critical time for our industry.  We face a number of new challenges that have resulted from extraordinary instances of malfeasance and profound regulatory changes of the last few years.  While regulators have taken a few positive steps, more needs to be done to ensure customers and our markets are better protected.  If elected to NFA’s Board, my mission will be clear: to restore and preserve confidence in a rapidly changing futures market by ensuring that NFA fulfills its obligations…...

Let George Do It! For more than 30 years the NFA has developed programs that safeguard market integrity, protect investors. At times our organization has been visionary in its pursuit of appropriate regulations and services.  As your new Board Member, I endeavor to maintain and enhance this effort. Certainly the confidence of investors is critical to the success and growth of our markets. The most effective is to create and maintain the highest levels of integrity of all market participants. • Vision I have served on many profit and nonprofit boards, from corporate endeavors, to college, and philanthropic organizations.  As…...

As your industry advocate, the NIBA provides many services which help your business stay in compliance with NFA regulations. “Ask the NFA,” is the way you can ask questions about those regulations and compliance requirements without having to call NFA directly. Just email us at [email protected] and we will get the answers for you. Please keep in mind the purpose of this contact is to keep the lines of communication between NFA and NIBA members open, not to fix any specific individual concerns.  This month’s questions were selected from those submitted by NIBA members. The answers were supplied by NFA…...

As part of its ongoing commitment to customer protection, National Futures Association (NFA) recently made changes to its display of futures commission merchant (FCM) financial information on its Background Affiliation Status Information Center (BASIC) online tool. BASIC is a comprehensive database of registration, disciplinary and financial information about derivatives firms and salespeople. It contains the disciplinary history and other background information of more than 150,000 individuals and 10,000 firms that currently, or have been, involved in the derivatives industry. Since 2012 when NFA enhanced the amount of information it provides to investors performing due diligence of firms, BASIC has displayed…...

On Monday, November 3, 2014, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) held an open meeting to consider three proposed rule amendments addressing the residual interest deadline (CFTC Rule 1.22), recordkeeping requirements for commodity interest and related cash or forward transactions (CFTC Rule 1.35), and forward contracts with embedded volumetric optionality (CFTC Products Release ).  In passing the amendments, the CFTC, acting under a new chairman, demonstrated a willingness to re-visit prior rulemaking under the Dodd-Frank Act.  The meeting began with opening statements by Chairman Massad and Commissioners Wetjen and Bowen. Chairman Massad vocalized support of the amendments and stressed…...

As your industry advocate, the NIBA provides many services which help your business stay in compliance with NFA regulations. “Ask the NFA,” is the way you can ask questions about those regulations and compliance requirements without having to call NFA directly. Just email us at [email protected] and we will get the answers for you. Please keep in mind the purpose of this contact is to keep the lines of communication between NFA and NIBA members open, not to fix any specific individual concerns.  This month’s questions were selected from those submitted by NIBA members over the last two months. The…...

Four years ago in 2010, Congress enacted new tax legislation that only recently came into effect.  This article briefly discusses two additional U.S. tax regimes arising from such new tax legislation:  (i) the 3.8% net investment income tax plus the additional 0.9% Medicare payroll tax; and (ii) the 30% withholding tax under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.  These additional tax regimes have the effect of increasing the effective tax rate of individual taxpayers, and creating additional administrative responsibilities for withholding agents with respect to identifying payees, withholding taxes on amounts paid to payees, and reporting payee information to the…...

New Self-Executing Registration Relief for Delegating CPOs On October 15, 2014, the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (the “Division”) of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) issued CFTC Letter No. 14-126 (“Letter 14-126”).  Letter 14-126 grants self-executing no-action relief from the requirement to register as a commodity pool operator (“CPO”) under the Commodity Exchange Act (the “CEA”) to persons that have delegated certain of their responsibilities as a CPO (“Designating CPO”) to another person that is registered as a CPO (“Designated CPO”), such that the Designated CPO will serve as the CPO of the pool in lieu of…...

FUTURES COMMISSION MERCHANTS In a July 7, 2014 Notice to Members, the National Futures Association (“NFA”) announced a reduction in the assessment fee paid by futures commission merchants (“FCMs”) Members. The NFA’s Board of Directors approved the reduced assessment fee on May 15, 2014. The reduction is a result of an amendment to NFA Bylaw 1301, which covers dues and assessments of NFA Members. Effective October 1, 2014, the amended paragraph (b) of Bylaw 1301will reduce the assessment fee by fifty percent (50%).  Each FCM member will pay, to the NFA, an assessment equal to $0.02 for each commodity futures…...

By now, all FCMs are to have made public via their websites certain financial data per CFTC Rule 1.55. This information is important to Introducing Brokers as it makes available to your firm a way to better assess the credit profile of each FCM. Each FCM must have posted: Daily segregation statement for segregated, secured and cleared swap funds Summary capital computation for the most recent 12 months Most recent certified audit report Unaudited 1FR/Focus reports for the most recent 2 months Links to the FCM financial data on the NFA and CFTC website To further enable customers to make…...