Prohibitions and Restrictions on Proprietary Trading and Certain Interests in, and Relationships with, Hedge Funds and Private Equity Funds
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (``CFTC'' or ``Commission'') is adopting a final rule to implement Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the ``Dodd-Frank Act''), which contains certain prohibitions and restrictions on the ability of a banking entity and nonbank financial company supervised by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the ``Board'') to engage in proprietary trading and have certain interests in, or relationships with, a hedge fund or private equity fund. Section 619 also requires the Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission to also issue regulations implementing section 619 and directs the CFTC and those four agencies to consult and coordinate with each other, as appropriate, in developing and issuing the implementing rules, for the purposes of assuring, to the extent possible, that such rules are comparable and provide for consistent application and implementation. To that end, although the Commission is adopting a final rule that is not a joint rule with the other agencies, the CFTC and the other agencies have worked closely together to develop the same rule text and supplementary information, except for information specific to the CFTC or the other agencies, as applicable. In particular, the CFTC's final rule is numbered as part 75 of the Commission's regulations, the rule text refers to the ``Commission'' instead of the ``[Agency]'' and one section of the regulations addresses authority, purpose, scope, and relationship to other authorities with respect to the Commission. Furthermore, it is noted that the supplementary information generally refers to the ``Agencies'' collectively when referring to deliberations and considerations in developing the final rule by the CFTC together with the other four agencies and references to the ``final rule'' should be deemed to refer to the final rule of the Commission as herein adopted.