Dealers

Canadian natural gas dealers took a cold financial bath in the first half of this year, when downpours of falling sales volumes and prices cut their export revenues by 48%. Pipeline deliveries from Canada into the United States dropped 8% to 1.5 Tcf in the first half of 2012 (IH2012), down from 1.64 Tcf in the same period of 2011, according to trade records kept by the National Energy Board (NEB).

Canadian natural gas dealers took a cold financial bath in the first half of this year, when downpours of falling sales volumes and prices cut their export revenues by 48%.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is scheduled Wednesday to consider the much-anticipated final rule defining “swap dealers” (SDs) and “major swap participants” (MSPs), as well as other market entities. The rule, the result of probably the most contentious rulemaking proceeding at the agency, will lay the groundwork for the CFTC to proceed with other regulatory reforms under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

Major swaps dealers told federal regulators Friday that while all traders of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives should have access to central clearinghouses, actual membership in a clearinghouse should be limited to companies with the ability to absorb another member’s default.

In a regulatory U-4 filing last August to the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a former UBS PaineWebber adviser based in Houston said he believes he was fired after he told some of his clients to sell their Enron Corp. stock. Chung Wu said in an Aug. 31, 2001 filing that he had sent an e-mail to more than 10 of his clients Aug. 21, 2001 voicing concerns about Enron’s future and advising them to sell. He was fired the same day.