Derivatives Clearinghouse Rules Softened in Win for Banks
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In a victory for banks, global financial regulators revised rules governing how much money must be set aside to cover losses by swaps traders, backing away from guidelines that firms warned would destabilize the $693 trillion derivatives market.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s final rule, released today, would require swaps dealers to hold less cash to protect against defaults than did a proposal published last year. The plan now applies a minimum 20 percent risk weighting to money deposited at clearinghouses, which are third parties that guarantee the transactions, down from 1,250 percent in the original proposal. The change takes effect on Jan. 1, 2017.