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The market rebound since end of December fuelled hedge fund strategies most exposed to risk assets such as L/S Equity and Special Situations, according to the latest Weekly Brief from Lyxor’s Cross Asset research team.
Lyxor writes that this is in sharp contrast with performance in Q4-18, which was ‘dreadful’. “Our preferred strategies are those who can navigate fast changing market conditions like those we experienced recently. Merger Arbitrage and Fixed Income Arbitrage have met expectations in that regard.”
“CTAs have done well in December but are under pressure in early January due to the rebound in equities which
Capital Markets technology specialist Neueda has launched a comprehensive service aimed at helping investment firms enhance competitiveness, improve efficiency and streamline costs through test automation.
Combining Neueda’s industry experience and its automation technology, Scrutiny has been developed to reduce cost of ownership of front office applications to capital markets firms and improve time to market through test automation and process optimisation.
Through its Scrutiny service, Neueda provides capital markets firms with a full analysis of their current development processes, access to a team of skilled experts and a suite of solutions to deliver process improvements quickly.
“We have
JP Morgan Asset Management released its inaugural Global Alternatives Outlook featuring a 12- to 18-month outlook for each of the key alternative asset classes and highlighting the firm’s CEOs, CIOs, portfolio managers and strategists’ most promising investment ideas over that time horizon.
The report aims to provide investment direction in a year of transition and change as markets adjust to global quantitative tightening, credit markets awash in money with loose covenants, newly volatile equity markets, the threat of trade wars and tariff uncertainty, and a long-in-the-tooth economic expansion.
“As market risks continue to build in 2019, our Alternatives Outlook
Intertrust in Jersey has appointed David Middleton and Phil Maletroit as client directors in its fund services division.
Middleton has joined Intertrust’s private equity team and is a Chartered Accountant and CFA charterholder. He has experience in all aspects of fund administration and completing the full lifecycle of deals, gained whilst working for a venture fund.
In his new role Middleton will ensure the funds team delivers optimal client service by putting in place the right structures, tools and guidance to meet the clients’ needs.
Maletroit has joined Intertrust’s real estate team with 20 years’ experience in Jersey’s
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
