On May 29, the National Futures Association provided notice to its members of the unanimous approval by the NFA Board of Directors (Board) of proposed amendments to NFA’s Articles of Incorporation. Subject to approval by NFA’s membership, the changes reduce the size of the Board, remove special voting rules for actions of the Board, allow non-NFA member nomination of public directors and provide that only public directors (as opposed to all directors) may elect public directors’ representatives to the executive committee.

The Board currently has 35 directors, and was scheduled to be increased to 37 directors in February 2016. The Board approved a reduction to 29 directors, to be made effective in February 2016.

To accomplish this reduction, the representation of futures commission merchants will elect five, rather than seven, directors. Swap dealers, major swap participants and retail foreign exchange dealers collectively will similarly be reduced from seven to five directors. Each group will be composed of two directors from large firms, two directors from small firms and one at-large director. In addition, the number of commodity pool operator/commodity trading advisor directors will be reduced from five to four, and the number of public directors will be reduced from 13 to 10.

Finally, the Board approved the removal of special voting rules that were adopted when swap participants were integrated into NFA’s governance in 2012 and which required the approval of classes of directors, as opposed to a simple majority of the Board.

NFA has mailed ballots to all of its members and these must be completed and returned by June 19.

NFA Notice I-15-15 is available here.