November 17, 2010
Mary Schapiro
Chair
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F Street, NE
Washington, DC 20549
Dear Chair Schapiro:
I write to express my concern about the proposed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules in Sections 726 and 765 of the Dodd-Frank Financial Services Reform Act which are in direct contradiction of the recently passed legislation.
One of the key goals of the legislation was to have the SEC adopt clear and tough rules that would help to promote fair and open competition in the trading marketplace. It also sought to have the SEC, through these regulations, mitigate systemic risk and conflicts of interest to ensure that competition remained open and fair.
While your proposed regulation would limit individual swap dealer ownership to 5%, it would still allow dealers to collectively own 100% of a clearinghouse system, swap execution facility or an exchange that trade swaps which is very troubling for many of us that advocate for small, locally-owned businesses. This type of rule, in the proposed regulation, would still result in dealers directing their business to a single, monopolistic clearing facility owned exclusively by the dealers themselves.
Because of this, I want you to strongly urge the SEC to eliminate the 5 percent alternative that has been proposed to ensure that no financial institutions or entities will be able to use it as alternative way to continue their dominance of clearing facilities and the flow of high profits from an anticompetitive market.
I urge the Commissions to live up to the mandate of Dodd-Frank by stopping any one entity or class of entities from dominating a majority ownership of the clearinghouses, Swap Execution Facilities (SEFs) and exchanges that are so vital for successful implementation of the Dodd-Frank legislation.
Sincerely,
Daniel Torres
President