The CME Group, a conglomerate of derivatives marketplaces, and China Securities Index Co. Ltd. (CSI), dubbed the “largest index provider in China,” have begun a strategic partnership that will lead to new commodity indexes, and will pave the way for the listing, trading and clearing of derivatives products based on the commodity indexes to be… Read More >>
Looking for a Few Silver Linings
For this week’s posting, I purposely tried to find news items that if not necessarily good news had some silver linings of hope and progress. I found three via my random, unscientific search. SEC Achieves Early $30 Million Settlement in Newswire Hacking Case The first piece I hit upon was the news from the SEC… Read More >>
ISDA Pushes for a Derivatives Product ID Standard
Derivatives trading advocate the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has launched a symbology project intended to provide an industry-wide, open-source standard to help all derivatives facilities such as trading venues, clearinghouses, repositories and other infrastructures meet regulatory needs. The new industry data project is charged with developing an open-source standard derivatives product identification system… Read More >>
The First Conviction in the LIBOR Scandal
The situation sounds almost like a bad, high-concept synopsis for a Hollywood movie — maybe “Rain Man” meets “Wall Street” — but the reality is far less glamorous. In the U.K., Tom Hayes, described by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) as “the first individual to be charged and stand trial” in an ongoing criminal investigation… Read More >>
Five Years On, Dodd-Frank’s Ops Changes Are Here to Stay
The U.S. financial services industry — including its collective back- and middle-offices in particular — has undergone sweeping changes since the Great Recession, the vast majority of which are directly attributable to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. The law was contentious from the very beginning, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that opinion on its… Read More >>
ISDA: Regulatory Harmony Needed After Five Years of Dodd-Frank
Despite greater transparency and the reduction in counterparty risk via the Dodd-Frank Act, the next stage of reform for derivatives trading should be focused on regulatory regimes that “are consistent and harmonized across borders, and to ensure they support risk management that enables economic activity and growth,” say officials at the International Swaps and Derivatives… Read More >>
Questions Remain Ahead of SunGard IPO
Investor appetite for FinTech giant SunGard’s recently announced initial public offering (IPO) remains unclear at this point, but solid products and a good position within the market could prove to be bright spots, according to a new report. Recently released by FinTech-focused investment bank FTPartners, “Transaction Profile: SunGard Files for its IPO,” highlights many of… Read More >>
Rival Systems Appoints Sales and Marketing Directors
Derivatives trading IT vendor Rival Systems has appointed Natasha Solis as its new director of sales and business development, and Sara Goodman as its new director of marketing, officials say. Solis will be responsible for “building Rival’s customer base and establishing key partnerships with industry leader,” while Goodman will “develop and execute the branding and… Read More >>
ISDA Seeks Bidders for Crowdsourcing SIMM Utility
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. (ISDA) reports that it has launched a tender process to select a third-party to build and operate a crowdsourcing utility for the ISDA standard initial margin model (SIMM). The utility is meant to “aggregate and compile risk data,” so that market participants can implement the ISDA SIMM “consistently,” ISDA… Read More >>
Goldman Sachs Hit with $7M Penalty for Software Glitch
U.S. regulator, the SEC has hit investment banking giant Goldman Sachs with a $7 million penalty for allegedly violating the market access rule, “in connection with a trading incident that resulted in erroneous executions of options contracts,” officials say. An SEC investigation found that Goldman sent out roughly 16,000 mispriced options to various exchanges in… Read More >>