“A US court has thrown out Bloomberg LP’s legal challenge to new margin requirements for swaps trading, in a significant victory for the regulators as they finalise the details of Wall Street reforms under the Dodd-Frank Act.

Bloomberg, which plans to start offering swaps trading to clients of its financial data terminals, had alleged that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was creating an uneven playing field and tipping the scales in favour large futures exchanges.

However, district court judge Beryl Howell late on Friday night dismissed the lawsuit, saying that “once the plaintiff’s hyperbolic rhetoric is swept away, no facts are left to sustain the relief it seeks”.

The judge said Bloomberg’s claims were based on unsubstantiated theories about what might happen when the new rules start to go into effect, starting with a requirement that most swaps trades go through a central clearing house. That requirement goes into effect on June 10.”

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