ICMA, BMA, ISDA Form Capital Markets Board

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, The International Capital Markets Association and The Bond Market Association have formed The Global Capital Markets Board.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, The International Capital Markets Association and The Bond Market Association have formed The Global Capital Markets Board. The GCMB will act as a forum for the three associations to identify key issues in the global market and develop common industry positions for regulatory, legal and market issues.

The idea of creating the GCMB had been in the works since last spring when the BMA and the ICMA groups started working on the venture and decided the collaboration should include the three tenants of the marketplace, and that ISDA should be added, explained Micah Green, ceo of the BMA. “Over the course of ’05 we wanted to know how things were progressing [with the board] and when things started to come to fruition we joined on,” said Bob Pickle, ceo of ISDA. The GCMB will be dealing with issues all three groups would have an interest in, but does not fall solely under the jurisdiction of one group over the others.

“Another general theme that we will be looking at is transparency in the markets, specifically bond and derivative transparency,” Pickle noted. Green added that the cooperation between the three groups has been exceptional and that each organization has brought its own unique viewpoint to the table.

The board will be holding its first meeting in about one month and will begin to lay out the groundwork for what specific projects it will address. The board will meet three times a year and will comprise each organization’s chairman, vice chairman and ceo, or their organizational equivalents. A fourth member will represent each organization, although the specifics of the position have not yet been decided. Additionally, no bank can have more than one representative.

Confirmed board members from the BMA include: Edward Forst of Goldman Sachs, Blythe Masters of JPMorgan and Green. Members representing ISDA are: Jonathan Moulds of Bank of America, Michele Faissola of Deutsche Bank and Pickle. The ICMA members could not be determined as neither a spokeswoman nor Hans-Joerg Rudloff, chairman of the ICMA, could be reached.