Yesterday, the Foreign Exchange Professionals Association (FXPA) filed a comment letter with the CFTC in connection with its recent proposal to maintain the current $8 billion de minimis threshold for swap dealer registration.

In its comment letter, which is available here: https://comments.cftc.gov/PublicComments/ViewComment.aspx?id=61753&SearchText= in addition to supporting the CFTC’s proposal to keep the de minimis threshold in swap dealing activity for swap dealer registration at $8 billion; the FXPA also confirmed its support for excepting non-deliverable forwards (NDFs), as well as exchange-traded swaps, whether on SEFs or DCMs, and cleared swaps, from calculations of firms’ swap dealing activity for purposes of the de minimis threshold.

“The FXPA appreciates the opportunity to comment on the CFTC’s recent proposal to maintain the de minimis threshold for swap dealer registration at $8 billion,” says FXPA President, John Shay. “We are also grateful to be able to draw upon the collective views of our broad membership of participants in the foreign exchange market to support regulatory changes that will further the goal of ensuring that our financial markets are fairly and properly regulated.”

The Foreign Exchange Professionals Association (FXPA) voted in a slate of new Board members at its annual meeting on March 6, and re-elected Chip Lowry, Senior Managing Director at State Street Global Markets, as Chairman, and Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director at CME Group, as Treasurer.

Members new to the Board include Lisa Shemie, Chief Legal Officer, Cboe FX and Cboe SEF; Jill Sigelbaum, head of FXall, Thomson Reuters; and Christopher Matsko, Head of FX Trading Services, Portware. Members re-elected to the Board include: Jason Vitale, COO FX & Head of Client Execution, BNY Mellon Global Markets; Jonathon O’Donnell, Investment Manager, CalPERS; Tahreem Kampton, Senior Director, Microsoft; Tod Van Name, Global Head of FX Electronic Trading, Bloomberg; Stephen Komon, Senior Portfolio Manager, Colorado PERA; KC Lam, Head of FX and Rates, Singapore Exchange (SGX); and Chip Lowry, Senior Managing Director, State Street Global Markets.

The new appointments join existing Board members Jessica Sohl, President, HC Technologies; David Goone, Chief Strategy Officer, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE); Edgar Ramon, Global Head of FX, INTL FCStone; and Joseph Molluso, CFO, Virtu Financial.

During the annual meeting, FXPA’s new Chair of the Policy Committee, Cboe’s Shemie, outlined five working groups that FXPA is forming focused around: the FX Global Code; Cryptocurrencies; MiFID II and Cross-Border Regulation; SEF Trading; and Clearing and Margin.

“We will be focusing our collective energy on solving issues that are critical for our members, and on the smooth functioning of the FX market more broadly,” says Shemie. “The role of the Policy Committee is to create an effective forum for discussion, education and advocacy and to have a meaningful role in the continued development of global currency trading market structure. We are very excited to get to work.”

Launched in September 2014, FXPA is a Washington, DC-based organization that represents the collective interests of a full array of professional foreign exchange industry participants. The group was developed to engage key regulators, policymakers, the news media and general public through education, research and advocacy, with the goal of advancing a sound, liquid, transparent, and competitive global currency market.

The Foreign Exchange Professionals Association (FXPA) is pleased to announce the hire of John Shay as President of the organisation, a newly created role. Additionally, FXPA has hired Mercury Strategies, represented by Justin Slaughter, as its new legal counsel.

“We are excited to welcome John and Justin to FXPA. They will be involved on a day-to-day basis, leading the group’s efforts to focus on the issues that matter most to the FX industry and help fulfil our mission statement, which is to advance a sound, liquid, transparent and competitive global currency market through education, research and advocacy,” says FXPA Chairman Chip Lowry.

“Through a dedicated President, FXPA will focus on market structure issues that directly impact the FX industry within each of the industry sectors and geographic regions that our diverse membership represents,” adds Lowry.

“I’m excited to be back involved with FXPA and look forward to rolling my sleeves up and getting to work. FXPA’s membership is unique in that it comprises a diverse set of FX industry leaders who together represent the breadth of the FX marketplace. In harnessing this knowledge base, FXPA is operating from a position of strength and can concentrate its collective efforts on areas that will benefit from better standards and practices in accordance with our mission to promote a healthy global FX market,” says Shay.

“When I was at the CFTC, I always enjoyed engaging with FXPA and their members about matters of policy and law. The Association and its members have a wealth of knowledge about the FX industry and market that is unmatched. It’s a privilege to be able to represent them as legal counsel and to be able to work closely with John Shay. I’m looking forward to working with John, the Board, and all the members to continue to advance the Association,” says Slaughter.

Shay was an active Board member when he worked at FXPA founding member firm, Virtu Financial. His role at FXPA will be to help lead the group forward through membership outreach, working group coordination, and a focus on expanding FXPA’s relationships with complementary trade groups, among other areas of expansion.

Shay was mostly recently at Nasdaq, where he served as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Fixed Income and Commodities. He currently serves as a board member of both LCH Group Limited and LCH Groups, and has served as an advisor to the US Treasury, CFTC, SEC, New York Fed and Bank of England. He has also testified before the US Congress on market structure reforms, most recently in July 2017.

From 2012 to 2016, Shay served as Senior Vice President for Global Markets at Virtu Financial, where he was responsible for managing outside venue, vendor and trading relationships, focused on fixed income, commodities and currencies.

In 2007, Shay founded and served as Chief Marketing Officer of IDCG. He oversaw all sales efforts, including managing all buy side, sell side and clearing member relationships. IDCG was sold to LCH in August of 2012.

Shay also founded and served as Managing Partner at Capital Market Services Inc, a wholly owned clearing and execution services business designed to improve market access for algorithmic strategy hedge funds in the over-the-counter and exchange traded space.

Shay began a 25-year career at ICAP (now NEX) in 1982, where he served as Executive Vice President and Global Head of Sales for ICAP Electronic Broking (IEB) for Fixed Income and Foreign Exchange from 2003 to 2007. Prior to 2003, he helped develop strategic partnerships in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South America and the European Union, and was instrumental in growing the company’s market share in US Treasuries, Mortgage Backed Products and Repo.

Meanwhile, Slaughter has served in just about every area of government and politics, from Capitol Hill to the Executive Branch, and from the judiciary to political campaigns. As Chief Policy Advisor and Special Counsel to Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Sharon Bowen, Slaughter advised the Commissioner on all matters of policy, politics, press and law regarding the futures and swaps markets.

Prior to CFTC, Slaughter served as General Counsel to Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts and advised the Senator on matters of law, finance, taxation and foreign policy, including implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, policies to spur domestic economic growth, government funding and the raising of the debt ceiling, campaign finance reform, judicial and executive branch nominations.

Slaughter has also practiced law at the Washington office of McDermott Will and Emery LLP, where he focused his practice on securities and congressional investigations. Slaughter served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jerome Farris on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Launched in September 2014, FXPA is a Washington, DC-based organization that represents the collective interests of a full array of professional foreign exchange industry participants. The group was developed to engage key regulators, policymakers, the news media and general public through education, research and advocacy, with the goal of advancing a sound, liquid, transparent, and competitive global currency market.

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