Market participants must be mindful of the robust enforcement environment at the CFTC and U.S. futures exchanges. In 2015, the CFTC brought numerous enforcement actions and continued to impose aggressive civil monetary penalties on market participants, including energy and agricultural companies. Significantly, the CFTC also started to pivot from implementing to enforcing its regulations promulgated under the Dodd-Frank Act. In light of its scarce resources, the CFTC also has put pressure on futures exchanges such as CME and ICE Futures U.S. to aggressively police their markets.
In a recent Legal Update, members of the Commodity and Derivatives Group in the Washington, DC, office of Norton Rose Fulbright discussed significant developments in CFTC and exchange enforcement during 2015. Particular topics addressed include the following:
- Cases enforcing Dodd-Frank regulations
- Manipulation
- Non-manipulation cases against energy and agricultural companies
- Disruptive trade practices
- Failure to supervise
- Position limits violations
- Bitcoin and swap execution facilities
- False statements
- Customer protection
- Domestic and international enforcement cooperation, and the whistleblower program.
