Publications

The five federal financial regulators responsible for implementing the Volcker Rule have issued a final rule to revise a number of provisions in the Volcker Rule’s 2013 implementing regulations (the “2013 Rule”). The final rule, which is largely similar to the agencies’ proposed rulemaking, issued in January 2020, provides some clarifying amendments to the Volcker Rule’s current restrictions on sponsoring and investing in certain covered hedge funds and private equity funds, and also adds some new exemptions allowing banking entities to sponsor and invest without limit in credit funds, venture capital funds, customer facilitation funds and family wealth management vehicles. The final rule also loosens certain other restrictions on extraterritorial fund activities and direct parallel or co-investments made alongside covered funds. The final rule thus modestly expands the ability of banking entities to invest in and sponsor private funds.

Following is a high-level summary of certain key features of the final rule.