Following the collapse of Long Term Capital Management more than 10 years ago, a government report called for derivatives market reform. The report, issued by the President’s Working Group in April 1999, noted that “market history indicates that even painful lessons recede from memory with time”. Sure enough, once the LTCM headlines disappeared, the impetus for reform vanished.

Today we face a similar challenge – to not let time, a rebound in the market or lobbying efforts of derivatives dealers obscure the need to reform the over-the-counter derivatives market.