Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Earlier this month, the Managed Funds Association asked the Markets Participants Division of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to issue a no-action letter related to private fund managers and registration as Commodity Pool Operators and Commodity Trading Advisors. The MFA requested confirmation that MPD will not recommend the CFTC enforcement action against a private fund…
As 2026 begins, the two biggest investment management regulators are short on staff and leadership. The DOGE purge has left each agency with 10%-15% fewer numbers in headcount. President Trump has also left commission seats on each vacant. The sole remaining Democratic commissioner at the SEC, Caroline Crenshaw, left when her her term ended on…
In early 2013, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission decided to grab for more regulatory oversight and revoked some long-standing exemptions. The CFTC also got handed the regulatory oversight of non-securities derivatives. As a result, private funds with interest rate hedges had to figure out if they had to register with the CFTC as a commodity…
Regulators get piles of comment letters on proposed rules. But do the comments have an affect? Three math and finance professors tried analyzed the text of comments and regulations to find and answer. Andrei A. Kirilenko, Shawn Mankad, and George Michailidis created a regulatory analytical tool called RegRank. The three researchers pointed RegRank at the…
The CFTC continues the journey out of the hole it dug itself. In February the CFTC stated that one swap contract would be enough to trigger the registration requirement. This runs with the CFTC long standing narrow interpretation of the commodity pool definition. The CFTC retreated from this position with respect to REITs in October….
The CFTC has given funds of funds six more months to determine whether they needs to register as a commodity pool operator. Dodd-Frank has made interest rate and some foreign exchange derivatives “commodities” and made them subject to oversight by the CFTC. There is a December 31, 2012 deadline approaching. However, the CFTC rescinded guidance…
The CFTC stretched when it said that a fund entering into even a single swap used purely for hedging purposes — will hold “commodity interests” and accordingly could be viewed as commodity pools by the CFTC. The CFTC has construed the concept of commodity pool broadly and has consistently maintained that there is no minimum…
Private equity funds with interest rate swaps or foreign exchange hedges have been wringing their hands over registration with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Dodd-Frank has brought those derivative instruments into the oversight of the CFTC. Shortly, they will be considered commodities. That means funds that previously did not consider themselves to be trading in…
The CFTC is going to dramatically expand its realm through the one-two punch of gaining regulatory control over non-securities derivatives and the removal of a widely used exemption. (With the release of REITs from the definition of “commodity pool” perhaps the CFTC is loosening its grip.) Fortunately, there is another exemption that most private equity…
Dodd-Frank’s Title VII is likely to sweep a bunch of private equity fund operators under the CFTC’s registration requirement. The CFTC stated that a single interest rate swap or foreign exchange hedge could drag the fund manager into the definition of “Commodity Pool Operator” (7 USC §1a(10) and have to register with the CFTC. The…