The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation on Thursday applied for U.S. regulatory oversight of its Trade Information Warehouse, seeking to position itself for global regulation of over-the-counter markets.

By establishing The Warehouse Trust Company under the supervision of the Federal Reserve and the New York State Banking Department, DTCC officials said the company will have a seat at the table as the international regulatory community drafts reforms for credit derivatives and other off-exchange instruments.

"Governments have made it clear that warehouses, as an important part of OTC market infrastructure, should be regulated," said Peter Axilrod, head of DTCC's derivatives business. "We thought we should be a little more proactive...in aligning ourselves with what the regulators would like to see happen."

The DTCC's push for U.S. oversight follows this month's announcement of a Treasury-backed plan that would mandate clearing of standardized over-the-counter derivatives and increase reporting requirements for market participants.

The New York-based clearing entity launched the Trade Information Warehouse in November 2006 to record details of U.S. credit default swap trades, part of a wide-ranging effort to reduce a backlog in outstanding trades.

Axilrod said that the application for U.S. oversight comes as the Fed and the European Central Bank hold conversations with other financial authorities, centered around a collaborative regulatory structure for the credit derivatives market.

The DTCC sees an expanded role for the Trade Information Warehouse under such a structure, including a European version of the warehouse, expansion into other OTC markets, and increased transparency around bilateral trades.

"We already have enough information to make these OTC derivatives markets as transparent as any exchange-traded market," Axilrod said.

The DTCC, a user-owned utility that clears nearly all cash equity trades in the United States, has no plans to clear credit derivatives trades itself, Axilrod said.

Instead the New York-based company looks to maintain its neutral status and provide operational infrastructure to a handful of central counterparties competing to clear OTC trades.

IntercontinentalExchange Inc. (ICE) launched the first U.S. platform for clearing credit derivatives in March, so far having cleared more than $646 billion in trades; Nasdaq OMX (NDAQ) and CME Group Inc. (CME) have developed their own OTC clearing platforms.

Across the Atlantic, Axilrod said, the DTCC's Trade Information Warehouse will support further OTC clearing efforts by ICE, NYSE Euronext (NYX), Deutsche Boerse (DB1.XE) and LCH.Clearnet, the DTCC's erstwhile partner in a merger that was scuttled last month.

The Treasury, Fed and other regulators have backed the clearinghouse approach as a way to reduce systemic risk in over-the-counter markets, with a central counterparty serving as middle man to bilateral trades in credit derivatives and other off-exchange instruments.

European regulators are expected to follow with their own derivatives reforms.

-By Jacob Bunge, Dow Jones Newswires; (312) 750 4117; jacob.bunge@dowjones.com