It’s that time of year when FTF News pauses to review the top securities operations trends of great interest to our readership in the year that was 2015. It’s been a year in which major banks and other financial institutions were slammed with penalties by the regulators. Mergers and acquisitions were rampant among big industry… Read More >>
Will “The Big Short” Spawn New Wall Street Crooks?
A new movie, “The Big Short,” full of Hollywood heavyweights who might know what a derivative is, is getting a lot of Oscar buzz and some headlines that suggest it will make you mad all over again about the Great Recession. Paramount Pictures has slated a limited release for the movie for this Friday, Dec…. Read More >>
The Ongoing Woes of FCMs
Derivatives expert John P. Needham, president of Needham Consulting, alerted us more than a year ago at Financial Technology Forum’s DerivOps Chicago conference in April 2014 to the fact that 10 futures commission merchants (FCMs) are handling 75 percent of U.S. customer segregated funds…
Cryptocurrencies Gain Ground Amid Real Money
The world of cryptocurrencies is an alternate yet visible reality that is gaining ground slowly but surely amid the established Matrix of supposedly real money. To recap, the main digital/cryptocurrency is the non-political online Bitcoin “backed exclusively by code,” according to the Bitcoin Foundation website. “This means that — ultimately — it is only as… Read More >>
SIFMA Tech Show in Limbo?
Sometimes interesting things fall into your lap and that’s the case with a bit of news about the future of the SIFMA Tech conference. It appears the future of the venerable technology management show of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is in a state of flux. I reached out to SIFMA’s public relations… Read More >>
Ops Story of the Year: The Return of the T+2 Push
It’s been a dynamic year when straight through processing (STP) and the push for T+2 settlement cycles made big comebacks while disturbing layoffs and ongoing fines and penalties appeared to be on the rise. We at FTF News have compiled the following list of the top Ops stories, trends, new currents and online video coverage… Read More >>
Two Guidances and a Farewell to 2014
Much needs to be tied up at the end of the year but unfortunately time speeds up. So before this interesting year wraps, I’d like to shine the spotlight on two guidances — a brand new one from the CFTC and an older one from the New York state government that got little coverage the… Read More >>
Ops Resolutions for 2014?
With great trepidation, I am putting forth 10 suggested resolutions for operations in 2014. I am aiming for limited, well-defined achievable goals or at least some creative daydreaming on how to improve post-trade functions, workflows and IT in what I suspect will be an adventurous year.1.) I will automate some aspect of reconciliation or I… Read More >>
Readers Pick FATCA as Top Story for 2013
Three of the top news stories for 2013 among FTF News readers dealt with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The adoption of the Volcker Rule by regulators was the second most popular story while the FIX protocol’s advances into post-trade processing also attracted lots of attention. SAC Capital’s admission of guilt also garnered… Read More >>
Get Ready for the Age of Volcker
Some participants at Sifma’s Annual Meeting last month were telling me that the Volcker Rule would never see the light of day. They were confident that the proposed changes made over the past two years had made the pending Dodd-Frank reform unrecognizable, even harmful to financial services firms. Surely, the regulators would drop it —… Read More >>