“Illegal insider trading is rampant and may even be on the rise,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in his recent interview with the New York Times. Throughout this past week the news has been scattered with reports claiming that a large insider trading investigation is reaching a close and that Wall Street should expect arrests
Buy-Side
Survey Results: What firms are doing (or not doing) about OTC Derivatives Valuations
During an FTF webinar last month sponsored by Open Link Financial (OpenLink), presenters Ken Knowles of OpenLink, Eric Gulbrandsen of Maven Wave Partners and Stephen Bruel of TowerGroup, conducted a series of polling questions to find out more about what’s on the minds of senior operations professionals of investment firms. Perspectives on OTC Derivatives Valuations
Financial Crime
Too Big To Fail is Back…
Earlier this week as I walked down Wall Street on my way to one of our securities industry training courses, I spotted a movie being filmed. While this is a normal occurrence in New York City, I’m always curious as to what’s being filmed, so I decided to take a quick detour to get a
Derivatives
Jon Stewart – “The Most Powerful Economic Force in the U.S.”
Well, its official… according to the Wall Street Journal, Jon Stewart is “the Most Powerful Economic Force in the U.S.” So powerful in fact, that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner went to Stewart for a private, off-the-record meeting back in April. A Treasury spokesman said “Jon Stewart is influential in America, so we took the opportunity
Back-Office
UCITS IV –Scared of Commitment?
Guest Contributer: Steve Carrier-Simon, Buy-side Sentinel Product Manager, Fidessa The implications of UCITS IV are being widely debated. And market watchers will all have their own areas of interest. What will be the tax issues? What will it mean for cross border mergers? How will master feeder structures be affected? Etc…etc The area that got
Back-Office
The Fed: Helping or Hurting?
The Federal Reserve recently began implementing their plan to help boost the U.S. economy – their $600 billion plan. The result: the S&P 500 immediately tumbled, reaching its greatest loss in three months. I’m not outright saying that there is a direct correlation; however, it is something to think about. The Fed announced their stimulus
Derivatives
The Volcker Rule – Say What?
While flipping through the Wall Street Journal last Monday, I did my usual scan of the Money & Investing section. Being that our 5th Annual OTC Derivatives Operations & Processing conference was days away, I settled on a front page article about the infamous Messrs Dodd and Frank. As I started to read the article
Conference and Event Planning
What Makes a Great Speaker Great?
At the end of each conference that Financial Technologies Forum hosts, we collect evaluations that rate how well each of our speakers did throughout the day on a 1 to 5 scale, 5 being excelleing and 1 being poor, as well as how the attendees felt about the conference content. Following our 5th Annual OTC
Back-Office
Derivatives – Devil or Angel?
Guest Contributor: Phil Sindel, Executive Director, Olmstead Associates, Inc. Say the word derivatives to some people and watch them begin to sweat, shake and think about widows and orphans being thrown out on the street. Derivatives appear to have pretty bad public relations! They have been blamed for everything from the current financial crisis to
Corporate Actions
Individual Investors are Making a Comeback
Standard & Poor’s index is up 17 percent since late August, and other statistics are also showing that the market is improving slowly but surely. These improvements may be causing a bullish atAAIItitude and drawing individual investors back into the market. Last week, in a survey conducted by the American Association of Individual Investors to
