On April 9, 2013, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”) granted last minute no-action relief from portions of the CFTC’s swap reporting rules. The relief delays certain compliance deadlines for many swap market participants, including corporate end-users and buy-side financial institutions. The no-action relief generally grants financial entities (other than Swap Dealers and Major Swap Participants) and non-financial entities additional time to comply with their swap reporting obligations, but financial entities did not receive any additional time to report interest rate and credit swaps, and must have started reporting on April 10, 2013 if they are the reporting party.

The CFTC has also granted separate no-action relief for the reporting obligations imposed on inter-affiliate swaps. There has been no extension of the deadline to comply with the CFTC’s swap recordkeeping requirements or the deadline for all swap market participants to obtain a legal entity identifier, for which the deadline remains April 10, 2013. Finally, Swap Dealers and Major Swap Participants must comply with external business conduct rules on May 1, 2013 and ISDA continues to encourage market participants to adhere to the August 2012 Dodd-Frank Protocol (“Protocol”) as quickly as possible in order to facilitate compliance with these rules.