On October 13, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued an order to establish December 31, 2018 as the new de minimis threshold phase-in termination date under its swap regulations. This order is the follow-up to the proposal in this regard made by CFTC Chairman Timothy Massad in a speech on September 15. More details relating to the phase-in and the Chairman’s proposal can be found in the September 16 edition of the Corporate & Financial Weekly Digest.

CFTC Regulation 1.3(ggg)(4)(i) exempts from the definition of a swap dealer a person that engages only in a de minimis amount of swap dealing activity. Specifically, a person that, over the course of the preceding 12 months, enters into swaps that have an aggregate gross notional value of no more than $8 billion, will not be a swap dealer. Under the CFTC’s order, this de minimisthreshold will drop to $3 billion on December 31, 2018, unless the CFTC takes action to confirm or modify the current threshold.

The CFTC order is available here.