Gary Gensler


Banks, trading houses and corporations trading energy and related commodities are bracing for one of the most visible financial reform efforts of the last century to finally take effect next month, and are observing the initial impacts on the first sector to be impacted: credit and interest rates.

Rules written by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission since the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation require all registered “swap dealers” to register their trades with centralized swap data repositories. The first stage of required reporting kicked in on the final day of 2012 for the notionally huge but comparatively tidy credit and interest rate markets, and is scheduled to start for the equally enormous but potentially more varied and heterogeneous commodity and energy trading markets in February (alongside foreign exchange and equity swaps). Keep reading →