Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Committee — Transparency Subcommittee

Summary Minutes of March 26, 2018 Call

The Transparency Subcommittee held a call on March 26, 2018 to discuss potential pilot programs on the impact of transparency rules on block trading in the corporate bond and municipal securities markets.

The call convened at approximately 3:00 p.m. via telephone. The following Subcommittee Members were on the call:

Brian Archer
John Bagley
Scott Krohn
Suzanne Shank
Kumar Venkataraman
Elisse Walter
Mihir Worah
Michael Heaney

The following staff from the Division of Trading and Markets were on the call:

David Shillman
John Roeser
David Dimitrious
Tom Eady
Ben Bernstein
Ted Uliassi

The following staff from the Office of Municipal Securities were also on the call:

William Miller

The following staff from the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis were also on the call:

Abby Kim
Michael Schihl

The first order of business was the parameters of a potential pilot study on the impact of trade reporting on corporate bond block trading. Specifically, the subcommittee discussed where dissemination caps should be set so that block trades above the caps would be subject, during the pilot period, to a 48-hour dissemination delay. After discussing the appropriate dissemination caps for both investment grade and high yield bonds, the subcommittee voted to set the dissemination caps for the pilot at $10 million for investment grade bonds and $3 million for high yield bonds.

The next order of business was whether the subcommittee should pursue a similar pilot study for municipal securities. The Subcommittee determined that at this time, based upon feedback from municipal securities market participants, there did not appear to be a consensus view that a block trading pilot study would be worthwhile in the municipal securities market.

The call concluded at approximately 4:00 p.m.