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By Bob Nicolson, Head of Consultancy at Nicolson Bray – Organisations today are facing a dangerous combination of mounting cybersecurity threat and a lack of in-house expertise to meet the challenge. Smaller firms have typically allocated responsibility for information security to a member of the operations or financial team and given IT the responsibility for technical cyber security. In most cases these responsibilities are secondary to the allotted individuals main role, resulting in issues around prioritisation and conflicts of interests.
As such, it is now commonly understood that having a person, or team, solely accountable for cyber security has become
Swiss private bank Falcon has introduced direct transfers of selected cryptocurrencies for both private and institutional clients.
With immediate effect, Falcon clients can directly transfer cryptocurrencies to and from segregated Falcon wallets, as well as convert them into fiat money. Falcon says that this new offering makes blockchain assets fully bankable.
Clients can place trading orders conveniently through e-banking or a dedicated relationship manager. Digital assets are included in portfolio statements as well as in tax reporting documents. In addition to ensuring best execution, Falcon provides secure storage thanks to its proprietary custody solution.
The bank has developed
B2C2, a cryptocurrency liquidity provider and specialist in electronic OTC trading, has launched streaming pricing with point-and-click execution on its OTC platform.
For the first time, B2C2’s clients will be able to view and execute trades on a real-time two-way market, via the firm’s secure web interface. The new functionality allows market participants to easily monitor live pricing in user-defined quantities and execute with the click of a button, as they would on traditional FX trading platforms.
The launch rounds out a number of milestones for B2C2 in 2018, including surpassing 2017 peak volumes; rolling out a completely redesigned
Privately-owned and independent fiduciary and administration solutions provider VG as made several personnel hires and promotions in its funds team.
Dominic Coyne has been promoted to Senior Manager, responsible for a team with established expertise in alternative investment funds and experience in the administration of a broad range of fund vehicles. Emily Roque has been promoted to Assistant Manager and Michael Bree has been appointed as Client Reporting Supervisor. Michael oversees VG’s fund administration software platform, Investran, and is responsible for financial reporting to managers and investors. In addition, Charles Carpenter has been promoted to Fund Administrator.
Ashley Le
Interactive Brokers is to give investors access to independent research provider CFRA’s ETF, and mutual fund research through the Investors’ Marketplace platform.
CFRA provides research on more than 1,400 ETFs and 22,000 mutual fund share classes, and its analytical team reports on more than 1,500 global companies using its proprietary STARS recommendations. The CFRA equity and fund research team also provides rigorous company, sector and industry analysis, which will be available through the Investors’ Marketplace platform and regular content contributions to the Interactive Brokers blog, Traders’ Insight.
Steven Sanders, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at Interactive
Business information provider IHS Markit has formed an alliance with AcadiaSoft, a provider of margin automation solutions, to connect the firms’ industry leading platforms for managing initial margin.
The alliance will help the non-cleared derivatives community comply with margin regulation, as potentially over 1,000 firms are brought into scope in phase four (September 2019) and phase five (September 2020).
In connecting their platforms, the integration will help shared customers achieve straight-through processing for the entire margin lifecycle, which includes negotiating margin terms, calculating initial margin for each trade and valuing and exchanging collateral daily.
Two-way data exchange
Man GLG, the discretionary investment management business of Man Group, has appointed three portfolio managers within its long-short equity team – Nick Longcroft, Matteo De Paulis, and Julien Sallmard.
Longcroft will be based in Hong Kong and focus on technology, media and telecoms. De Paulis and Sallmard will be based in London and focus on holding company arbitrage and European consumer, respectively. They will each report to Neil Mason, head of European long-short equity at Man GLG.
Longcroft joins Man GLG from Nezu Asia Capital Management, where he was the lead portfolio manager on the Nezu Technology Media
EEX Group continued its growth path in 2018, further consolidating its position as a global commodity exchange. On the power and emissions markets in particular, EEX recorded significant volume gains and continued its long-term growth trend.
“In 2018, we increased our volumes in almost every market. In addition, with the establishment of EEX Asia and the expansion of our offering in North America, we implemented further important steps to strengthen EEX Group’s position as a global commodity exchange,” says Peter Reitz (pictured), CEO of EEX.
Overall in 2018, EEX Group power markets achieved a volume of 4,962.1 TWh (2017:
Orchard Global Asset Management (OGAM), an alternative investment management firm with a focus on opportunistic fixed income and structured credit transactions, has closed its Taiga Special Opportunities Fund after raising USD2.5 billion in capital commitments.
“We appreciate the support of our existing LPs and welcome new investors into Taiga,” says Paul Horvath, Group CEO and co-founder of OGAM, “and believe that these relationships are a testament to OGAM’s continued ability to identify attractive risk-reward opportunities.”
Over 40 per cent of the capital commitments into Taiga came from existing OGAM investors, with the remaining 60 per cent made up
JTC has provided corporate services to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, for the launch of its Jersey platform, along with Carey Olsen who provided legal and regulatory advice for the launch.
Binance Jersey will provide secure and reliable sterling and euro to cryptocurrency (bitcoin and ethereum) exchange, enabling investors in Europe and beyond easy access to the rapidly evolving cryptocurrency market, and an alternative to standard currency (fiat) exchange.
JTC provided a range of specialist services to ‘incubate’ Binance Jersey ahead of its live launch, with a particular focus on bespoke technical compliance services that ensured Binance Jersey
