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The Division of Market Oversight (“DMO”) will hold a roundtable today to discuss the “Made Available to Trade” (“MAT”) process. I continue to support ways to improve swaps trading and liquidity on swap execution facilities (“SEFs”), as I believe was the intent behind the Dodd-Frank Act and our SEF rules.
The original intent of the Commission’s MAT process was to let the facilities decide. In practice, a single SEF could propose, based on its own commercial interests, what the Commission will review as a proposed mandate; also in practice, SEFs could choose not to propose, based on their own commercial interests, what the Commission will not review as a proposed mandate. As time has passed, and as we have heard from industry and participants, I have come to believe that this is not the best approach to make policy determinations for the entire swaps market. And as I have previously stated, I believe that the MAT process could be improved by a more orderly Commission-initiated determination, including a traditional comment period process.
I commend DMO staff and the Commission for holding this important dialogue as to how the MAT process should work going forward. I look forward to hearing the ideas from the participants during the roundtable, including domestic and foreign regulators, academics, and industry, as to their thoughts on the process and potential improvements.
