Securities Regulation Daily Wrap Up, CFTC NEWS—Commodities regulators mark passing of William T. Bagley, the agency’s first chair, (Jun 16, 2025)

By Mark S. Nelson, J.D.

The questions Bagley faced about the newly created CFTC’s authorities tend to recur whenever a novel contract is proposed or, more recently, as technology has enabled digital assets.

The CFTC today announced that the agency’s first Chair, William T. Bagley, has passed away. Bagley became the CFTC’s first chair in April 1975 and served in that capacity until November 1978, although he remained a commissioner until April of 1980. In addition to leading the CFTC in its formative years, Bagley also was a California lawmaker and private practitioner. Bagley was 96.

Acting CFTC Chair Caroline D. Pham issued a statement praising Bagley as one of the key persons who would shape the CFTC into a leading global derivatives regulator. “As the first CFTC chairman, he shepherded our agency through its first years, executing on once-novel Congressional authorities and establishing a regulatory framework to expand risk mitigation tools for America’s growers, producers, builders and merchants,” said Pham. “Fifty years after Chairman Bagley first opened the doors at the CFTC, this framework continues to be critical in driving the American economy forward.”

The CFTC seems always to be an agency on the verge of a new dispute about the scope of its regulatory authority vis-a-vis that of the SEC. Today, that uncertainty primarily concerns the oversight of digital assets, which proposed legislation may resolve. But in 1975 the concern was over the SEC’s and CFTC’s joint interests in overseeing the then-emerging markets for the trading of contracts for future delivery of mortgage-backed certificates guaranteed by the Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA) and the trading of contracts for future delivery of Treasury Bills (T-Bills).

A letter preserved by the SEC Historical Society from then-SEC Chair Roderick M. Hills to Bagley put it thus: The SEC believed that GNMA certificates and Treasury Bills (and contracts for future delivery of the certificates and T-Bills) were “securities” under the federal securities laws. By contrast, the CFTC had asserted that it, not the SEC, was exclusively responsible for overseeing trading in contracts for future delivery, including contracts for future delivery of securities.

“We therefore have a situation where two distinct statutory and regulatory schemes appear applicable, in a manner not yet precisely determined, to a variety of transactions and relationships involving securities,” said Hills at the time.

Legislation would eventually bring “security future” within the statutory definition of “security,” but would also preserve a form of co-regulation of security futures by the SEC and the CFTC.

In addition to working with the SEC to address issues of mutual regulatory interest, Bagley, as described in a February 2000 opinion issued by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, had given testimony to Congress that would form the basis for the commodity broker subchapter of the Bankruptcy Code.

Bagley, who was a California state lawmaker and a private legal practitioner, was nominated to lead the CFTC by President Gerald Ford. Bagley also was a founding member of the Futures Industry Association and in 2013 was inducted into the FIA’s Futures Hall of Fame.

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