Barclays Plc is tapping an increasing appetite from Asia-based quantitative and multi-strategy hedge funds for prime financing services and has upped its lending for investment trades as a result, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The move comes as some rivals including Credit Suisse, have exited or scaled back their the business over the past few years after losses.
As well as increased hedge fund demand for its prime financing business, Barclays has also seen an increase in business from private bank clients for cross-border structured products, including derivatives linked to US stocks, according to Hossein Zaimi, the region’s head of markets, who joined the bank in May last year.
Apart from offering equity and fixed income financing to prime clients, Barclays has has also bolstered offerings in corporate derivatives and macro products such as bond forward contracts, and is investing capital to build its foreign exchange electronic trading platform, expand equity derivatives operation, and emerging market macro trading capabilities.
