SEC no-action letter relating to prime brokerage

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One of the sacred artefacts of US prime brokerage; deep lore that we foreigners ought not speak.

But.

It does have a rather succinct description of what prime brokerage, for the most part, is. Made somewhat succincter, the JC reads the gist as follows:

Prime brokerage is the process by which a registered broker-dealer clears and settles of securities trades for its customers. It involves three distinct parties: the prime broker, the executing broker, and the customer.

The prime broker is a registered broker-dealer that clears and finances the trades the customer has executed with an “executing broker” — another registered broker-dealer at the customer’s request.

Each executing broker receives a letter from the prime broker agreeing to clear and carry each trade placed with it by the customer, where the customer directs delivery of money or securities under the trade to be made to or by the prime broker, to an account the customer maintains with the prime broker.

Orders placed with the executing broker are effected through an account with the executing broker in the name of the prime broker for the benefit of the customer.

When a customer places an order with the executing broker it informs the prime broker who records the transaction in the customer’s prime brokerage account and in an account with the executing broker.

So, for the purposes of the proposal, you have three actions going on:

• Customer order to executing broker
• Trade settlement settlement of the customer order between the executing broker and the prime broker on the customer’s behalf, which the prime broker settles out of its own funds
• Margin loan: A resulting margin loan between prime broker and customer (in the amount paid by prime broker to executing broker to settle the trade.

Englishers should note that these transactions have a unusual quality of agency about them, the unintended consequences of which the SEC no-action letter is meant to ameliorate. In an English law arrangement, the trade settlement would be regarded as a principal trade from the get go — the practical difference between a delivery versus payment trade settlement done as agent and one done as principal being nil anyway.

Proposal

Regulation T provides that anyone investing on margin has to have an account open, and can borrow up to a maximum of 50% of the purchase price. At also prohibits someone cheekily trading in and out of a position before having to front up with any cash — the “free-rider” problem. All good stuff, as a result of the 1929 crash where many investors were as much as 10 times levered. Never again said the US authorities, until we’ve fully forgotten the lessons of 1929, which didn’t happen till 1999, and notwithstanding quite hearty reminders in 1987 and 1998. But Reg T has remained.

Okay: so much for background. Now the market practice of “give-ups” rather queered the pitch seeing as hedge funds like to flash the cash and trade across the street with lots of executing brokers, but only have one (or at any rate a few) prime brokers. This looks — if you put your paranoia glasses on and squint a bit — like a free-rider play in violation of Reg T. Would the executing broker trade by fouled up by Regulation T?

The prime broker committee, chaired by Bear Stearns (remember them?) sought clarity from the SEC that a normal PB settlement would not be. It proposed to treat the “trade settlement” transaction between the prime broker and executing broker as an inter-dealer (principal) trade even though theoretically executed as agent for the customer. The SEC granted it, in the no-action letter.

See also

• The famous SEC no-action letter