Global Financial Markets

The novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 has raised a number of issues specific to public companies that file reports with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In this special edition COVID-19 update call, Michael Hermsen and Laura Richman will discuss.

The federal banking regulators, SEC, and CFTC have jointly proposed revisions to the Volcker Rule that address the prohibitions and restrictions regarding covered fund activities in the same way that the agencies’ August 2019 rulemaking primarily focused on the Volcker Rule’s restrictions on proprietary trading. The agencies intend for the proposed revisions to clarify, streamline, and ease the compliance burden of the covered funds provisions of the Volcker Rule.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board) has finalized revisions to its approach for determining whether one company has control over another for purposes of the US Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 and the Home Owners’ Loan Act, as amended. While in many respects the revisions incorporate a more transparent and predictable framework for interpreting controlling influence issues into the Board’s regulations, they also introduce new concepts and raise critical questions about how the Board will implement the approach in practice.

The UK finally exited the EU on January 31… but what does that mean? What has been agreed upon, what will happen next and how will it work in practice? Mayer Brown partner Chris Chapman and counsel Chris Roberts discuss.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) are proposing to make major changes to their decades-old Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations, which could have significant consequences for many US banks. Mayer Brown partners Jeff Taft and Stephanie Robinson discuss.

On October 8, 2019, the US Internal Revenue Service released proposed regulations addressing the US federal tax consequences of replacing an interbank offered rate (IBOR) with a successor rate. The proposed regulations generally provide the circumstances in which the replacement of an IBOR with a fallback rate, or an addition of a fallback mechanic to an existing instrument, will not result in a deemed exchange of the instrument under Section 1001 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. The proposed regulations also provide guidance on other considerations with respect to the transition away from IBORs. Mayer Brown partners Russell Nance and Steven Garden and associate Brennan Young provide an overview of the proposed regulations.

Mayer Brown partners Jim Antonopoulos, Amanda Baker and Susannah Schmid discussed the topic “What to Expect in 2020” in the structured finance markets.

A year into Kathy Kraninger’s tenure as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, what does the agency look like and how does it differ from the old CFPB? Please join Mayer Brown lawyers Ori Lev, Stephanie Robinson and Christa Bieker for an updated on the CFPB.

Over the last several months, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its staff have taken several steps that could significantly impact the advice provided by proxy advisory firms and how that advice is relied upon, as well as the shareholder proposals submitted for inclusion in annual meeting proxy statements. Laura Richman and Michael Hermsen discuss.

Capital Relief Trades (CRTs) - often referred to as synthetic securitizations - are used by banks to transfer risk on reference pools of assets to non-bank investors, reduce the risk weight of assets held by these banks and improve capital ratios. Historically, the CRT market has been dominated by issuers in the United Kingdom and other European jurisdictions, and, while the United States has lagged behind Europe in CRT issuance, there are reasons to believe this trend will change in the coming years. Mayer Brown partners Carol Hitselberger, Julie Gillespie and Ed Parker discuss why US banks are interested in CRT, the operational requirements for synthetic securitizations under the US capital rules and structuring considerations important to these transactions.