Stephen Humenik is Of Counsel at Covington & Burling LLP. This post is based on a Covington publication by Mr. Humenik, Keir Gumbs, Robert Kelner, Zack Parks, James Kwok, and Jason Grimes.
As election season enters full swing, with political candidates at all levels actively soliciting campaign donations from individuals and companies, it is an ideal time for all companies to review the policies and procedures in place for political donations. While the SEC’s pay-to-play rules governing registered investment advisers and their “covered associates” are well known, the rules governing swap dealers are more obscure. Specifically, swap dealers and security-based swap dealers are subject to the “pay-to-play” rules of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) respectively, which impose restrictions on the making of campaign contributions to officials of certain government entities with which a swap dealer does business.
