United States: Reminder Regarding April 10 Deadline For Identifying Number Registration By Some Swap End-Users

This is a reminder that tomorrow, April 10, 2013, is the deadline for parties to certain swap agreements to obtain a CICI identifying number. The April 10 deadline applies to any party who entered into a swap after April 25, 2011 (“swaps” are broadly defined to include a wide range of transactions including commodities swaps, interest rate swaps, currency exchange swaps, and credit swaps, among others). Registering for a CICI can be done through the CICI Portal at https://www.ciciutility.org [https://www.ciciutility.org/] and costs $200. Clients are advised to search the CICI database before registering since, in many cases, they may have already been registered by their swap counterparties. Parties who entered into swaps before April 25, 2011 also will need to register for a CICI, but have until a later deadline of October 7, 2013 to complete the process.

In an April 3 statement, Commissioner Bart Chilton of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) indicated that he would not approve any action against end-users “seeking to comply with CFTC Dodd-Frank rules in good faith” until after October 31, 2013. Though this statement by one of the CFTC’s five commissioners may suggest some enforcement latitude regarding compliance with the April 10 deadline, end-users of swaps executed after April 25, 2011 that are not CICI-registered by April 10 will be out of compliance with the rule.

The CICI registration requirement is part of a series of regulations issued by the CFTC in furtherance of the Dodd-Frank Act. Although these regulations will have only minimal impact on parties to existing swaps, there are a number of approaching deadlines that parties will need to meet if they wish to enter into additional swaps in the future, most notably a requirement to amend their master agreements by May 1, 2013. These additional Dodd-Frank requirements will be the subject of future alerts.

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