The $13 billion penalty levied by the Justice Department and other officials against JPMorgan for its “serious misrepresentation” in the packaging of residential mortgage-backed securities is a clarion call for financial services firms that law enforcement and regulators are on high alert for RMBS-related fraud. The JPMorgan case is also a harbinger of more to… Read More >>
Bill Clinton Advises Sifma on Its Charm Offensive
Bill Clinton began his speech at Sifma’s Annual Meeting this week by saying that he has great freedom to say whatever he wants because he’s an ex-president and that, he wistfully added, no one pays attention to him. He could not have been more wrong. As we saw, his comments for news website OZY about… Read More >>
A Halloween Treat: Interim CICIs Become Permanent
Unfortunately, I do not have a Halloween tale about an operations nightmare that would scare the bejesus out of you. Instead, there appears to be a bit of good news on the global legal entity identifier (LEI) front, which is a welcome change from the recent horrors of government shutdowns, record fines and markets fearing… Read More >>
Ops Lessons from the Shutdown?
Most firms on Wall Street, regardless of political affiliation, probably see the federal government shutdown combined with the debt ceiling crisis as a waste of time and money especially when the U.S. recovery needs all the help it can get from Washington. For securities operations, though, there is a little cold comfort in the takeaways… Read More >>
The Promise of Corporate Actions Contradictions
At one point during FTF’s CAPCon New York conference yesterday, a panelist noted that many of the issues being raised have not substantially changed over the past 20 years. While I concede the point, my perception is that corporate actions processing has become a mix of extreme contradictions that are harbingers of real changes to… Read More >>
The Government’s Emergencies Could Soon Be Yours
A Treasury Department report out today states that the potential credit default by the U.S. government could be “catastrophic,” resulting in frozen credit markets, a plummeting U.S. dollar, and “skyrocketing” U.S. interest rates. In sum, we could have the Great Recession II, making the debt-limit war between Congress and the White House your emergency too…. Read More >>
Would You Pay $812,460 to Fax Confirmations?
Manual processing stings especially in the investment fund services industry. Order placement, confirmation, fund transfer and reconciliation processes remain dominated by little or no automation, says market research firm Aite Group. In one case, a fund management firm spends $812,460 (€600,000) annually on faxes for its Taiwanese investors—representing 30% of the total transfer agency bill… Read More >>
Remembering Lost Lives and Triumphs
As the media reported on the many moving events yesterday commemorating the thousands we lost on 9/11, I was reminded that you can always stop and just remember them in your own way whenever you choose. This suits me because Sept. 11, 2001 is a day that is present forever even a dozen years later.Like… Read More >>
Will Fidessa Spur New Vendor Battles via Post-Trade FIX?
Normally a front-office vendor, Fidessa has today officially embraced the FIX protocol for its Post-trade Confirmation Hub offerings, which facilitate FIX-based trade affirmations and confirmations between buy-side and sell-side firms. This follows the work of the FIX Protocol Ltd. to push the electronic trading standard beyond the front office. Perhaps Fidessa’s FIX move is a… Read More >>
Is Wall Street Becoming a Rigged Game?
Should investors and the buy side worry that Wall Street is a rigged game? A new survey of 250 people working in financial services finds that nearly one-third of them are ethically challenged. While the sponsor of the survey, the law firm Labaton Sucharow, wants to raise awareness of its whistleblower practice, some of the… Read More >>
