Concerns remain that margin requirements will raise costs, CTU use curtailed.
CFOs and corporate treasurers are still worried about the possibility they’ll have to post or exchange margin for swaps they use to mitigate risks. That’s one of the conclusions from a survey from the Coalition for Derivative End-Users.
The Coalition, a group representing hundreds of companies and organizations, reported that 86 percent of companies said that having to set aside collateral OTC derivatives transactions would inhibit “business investment, acquisitions, R&D, and job creation.”
About half (47 percent) of respondents said their companies use a centralized trading unit (CTU) to execute OTC derivatives; and of these 30 percent have CTUs that are separate legal entities. This could put them in the cross-hairs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which although has said non-financial entities would be exempt, has written the rules in such a way that that exception could be denied.
In a letter to the CFTC in February 2013, the Coalition expressed concern that the provision in the Dodd-Frank Act is unclear and could be misinterpreted. The provisions states:
“An affiliate of a person that qualifies for [the end-user clearing exception] (including affiliate entities predominantly engaged in providing financing for the purchase of the merchandise or manufactured goods of the person) may qualify for the [end-user clearing] exception only if the affiliate, acting on behalf of the person and as agent, uses the swap to hedge or mitigate the commercial risk of the person or other affiliate of the person that is not a financial entity.”
The Coalition acknowledged in its letter that the language doesn’t require the CFTC to deny the end-user exemption to a non-financial end-user affiliates that trades through a CTU, however, “it has been suggested that the language could be read in such a restrictive way. This suggestion creates considerable uncertainty for end-users that use such centralized treasury units.”
In the survey, nearly 90 percent of respondents indicated they don’t really trust the CFTC on the question of CTUs. “Of those companies that use CTUs and that responded to a question as to whether CFTC no action relief would prevent them from being forced to clear trades, the great majority (85 percent indicated that they were either unsure about whether they could rely, uncomfortable about relying, or could not rely on the CFTC relief.”
Other findings from the survey include:
- Four-in-five respondents (81 percent) indicate that a margin requirement would have an impact on a capital expenditure.
- Nine-in-ten (91 percent) respondents indicate a margin requirement would cause them to alter their hedging strategy.
- In order to fully collateralize their OTC derivatives transactions, the average respondent would need to set aside $651.9 million of committed credit with the median company forecasting $125 million of committed credit.
The survey results were based on the responses of 43 CFOs or corporate treasurers of both public and private companies from a variety of sectors, including manufacturing, real estate, healthcare, energy, consumer products, media, telecom, and financial.