In an address before the ALI Conference on Investment Adviser Regulation in New York City on Dec. 6, 2012, Norm Champ, the Director of the SEC's Division of Investment, announced that the “Division staff will no longer defer consideration of exemptive requests under the Investment Company Act relating to actively managed ETFs that make use of derivatives.” The SEC instituted a moratorium on granting permission to ETFs to use derivatives in 2010 pending a study the agency was conducting regarding the use of derivatives by regulated investment companies. The SEC's decision affected new and pending exemptive requests from certain actively-managed and leveraged ETFs that particularly rely on swaps and other derivative instruments to achieve their investment objectives.