The Volcker Rule prohibits “banking entities” (generally, insured banks and their affiliates, and non-US banks with US banking operations) from engaging in proprietary trading or sponsoring or investing in private equity funds. Regulations initially implementing the rule were adopted by the federal banking, commodities and securities regulators (Agencies) in 2014.

In 2018, the Agencies proposed some changes to the Volcker Rule regulations. Our blog post on the proposal can be found here.

After considering the comments received on the proposal, on August 20, 2019, the Agencies started approving the agreed-upon text of the final rule. Our blog post discussing the final rule can be found here. By September 25, 2019, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had signed off on the final rule text. Only approval by the Federal Reserve Board is pending and it is expected that it will be approving the final rule shortly.

In her International Banking New York Law Journal column (subscription required), Kathleen Scott, a senior counsel in the New York office of Norton Rose Fulbright, discusses the final rule, focusing on those aspects of the final rule that may be of most interest to non-US banks with US operations.