“The largest Wall Street banks and foreign-based financial companies won a six-month delay in some swap regulations for overseas trades, even as they must begin registering with U.S. regulators by year-end.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the main U.S. derivatives regulator, voted 4-1 to leave the registration deadline in place while providing a delay until July 12 for capital and other requirements for overseas operations of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and other banks, the agency said in a statement yesterday. The CFTC also reduced the number of overseas offices immediately registering.

“There is a lot of work to be done with international regulators,” CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a telephone interview. “It’s my firm belief that if reforms were not to cover the branches and affiliates of U.S. entities either directly or through substituted compliance the public would be left without critical protections.””

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““We think it’s appropriate to give some more time on the issues of substituted compliance and the issues as to how the overseas branches and overseas guaranteed affiliates will be regulated with their outwardly facing trades, not the trades facing the U.S.,” Gensler said in the interview.

Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, a Washington-based organization advocating stricter financial regulation, said the delay fails to protect U.S. taxpayers.

“Wall Street and its army of lobbyists will use the additional time to continue their war on financial regulation that may hurt their profits, but which will protect the American people from having to bail them out again,” Kelleher said in a statement.””

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