The five agencies that adopted and administer the Volcker Rule have proposed to revise it. Interestingly, however, the proposed revisions make up a surprisingly small part of the release, much of which consists of questions regarding changes other than those proposed in the release, that might be considered worthwhile. Without suggesting that any responses to the more general requests for comment will necessarily result in changes, the release essentially enquires about the general manner in which the Volcker Rule implements section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act and the usefulness, necessity and effectiveness of many of the Rule’s detailed provisions regarding both proprietary trading and the relationships between banking entities and covered funds.

The changes actually proposed by the release relate more to proprietary trading, underwriting, market making, hedging and the related compliance mechanisms both by themselves and in relation to covered funds than they do to other aspects of sponsoring, owning and operating covered funds. In conjunction with more general efforts to allocate supervisory resources where they are most needed, the proposed changes would stratify compliance requirements according to the consolidated trading assets and liabilities of banking organizations. Those with trading assets and liabilities in excess of $10 billion would be subject to the most stringent requirements. Trading assets and liabilities of more than $1 billion but not more than $10 billion would subject a banking organization to fewer obligations, while banking organizations with trading assets of $1 billion or less would be presumed compliant unless determined not to be.