Last month the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) released the final report of its staff (the “Staff”) on the de minimis exception to the CFTC’s definition of “swap dealer” (the “Final Report”). That exception, which permits a market participant not to register with the CFTC as a swap dealer if it conducts dealing activity in swaps below a specified notional amount threshold, is a key to many market participants’ determinations that they need not register as a swap dealer.

Although based on problematic data and limited in its conclusions, the Final Report is part of the process, important to unregistered swap market participants, by which the CFTC will determine whether or not to modify the scheduled implementation of a lower de minimis threshold level. If the de minimis threshold is reduced, as contemplated by CFTC regulations, additional market participants will likely become subject to the swap dealer registration requirement and to the substantial body of CFTC regulations that apply to swap dealers. CFTC regulations provide for a de minimis threshold of $3 billion in notional amount of dealing activity in swaps over a 12-month period, subject to an initial phase-in period, still ongoing, during which the de minimis threshold is $8 billion in notional amount over a 12-month period. However, those regulations also require the Staff to draft a report such as the Final Report, and provide that nine months after publication of such report, and after giving due consideration to that report and associated public comment, the CFTC may either terminate the phase-in period, thus reducing the de minimis threshold to $3 billion, or determine that it is in the public interest to propose an alternative to the $3 billion de minimis threshold amount. Accordingly, absent CFTC action amending the regulations’ timeframe, the market will likely know on or about May 15, 2017, nine months after the Final Report’s publication, how the CFTC will treat the de minimis threshold.