The SEC Final Rule is the SEC’s first major step toward implementing its final regulatory regime under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act.

On June 25, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved a final rule (the SEC Final Rule) regarding the cross-border application of its rules under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (the Dodd-Frank Act). While the SEC’s proposed cross-border rule (the SEC Proposed Rule) covered a wide range of issues, including among other things:

• The definition of a “US person”

• Registration requirements for certain market participants, trade repositories, clearing agencies and security-based swap execution facilities

• Entity and transaction-level requirements for registered entities

• Compliance obligations for all other market participants

• Substituted compliance determinations

However, the SEC reserved many of these issues for later rulemakings. As a result, the SEC limits the scope of the SEC Final Rule to the following topics...