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Vida Capital, an alternative asset manager specialising in insurance-linked strategies, has held the final close of Vida Insurance Credit Opportunity Fund II (VICOF II) with USD886 million in capital commitments.
The fund closed ahead of its USD750 million target, reflecting a robust demand for the strategy from leading institutional investors including US and global public pension plans, insurance companies, foundations, family offices, and high-net worth individuals.
VICOF II will pursue the current longevity-based investment opportunity existing within the institutional life settlement and insurance-linked assets space. The fund capitalises on Vida’s demonstrated track record of alternative investing and life settlement
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today issued an Order filing and simultaneously settling charges against Christian Robert Mayer of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, for engaging in a fraudulent trading scheme involving unauthorised trades in cattle, crude oil and wheat futures contracts.
The CFTC Order requires Mayer to pay a USD100,000 civil monetary penalty and imposes permanent trading and registration bans on him. The Order also requires Mayer to cease and desist from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act, as charged.
James McDonald, Director of the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement, says: “Introducing Brokers serve an important role in connecting
OTCX, an independent digital portal for price discovery and negotiation in OTC derivatives, has facilitated the world’s first electronic non-deliverable interest rate swaps in Colombian Peso (COP), Malaysian Ringgit (MYR), Chilean peso (CLP), Chinese Yuan (CNY) and Taiwan Dollar (TWD).
This interest rate derivatives activity in new risk reflects the opportunities available for increased portfolio diversification, and the exponential growth in demand for a digital solution to replace manual processes in OTC derivatives trading.
Reflecting this burgeoning demand, OTCX has also become the first to have facilitated and completed two-way electronic price discovery and negotiation in new risk in over
Permian Capital Management, the San Francisco-based digital asset manager, has appointed financial industry executive, Josh Kernan, as Global Head of Distribution.
“Josh is a proven financial services executive who understands the demands of institutional investors,” says Shaunak Mali, Partner and co-founder of Permian Capital Management. “His expertise will be invaluable to Permian’s mission of bridging the nebulous world of digital assets with traditional finance.”
Josh joins Permian Capital Management with over 24 years of experience managing alternative investment products and investment platforms. He started his career at Charles Schwab & Co. where he founded the Alternative Investment Department and worked
London-listed service provider JTC has promoted alternative fund specialist James Tracey to Managing Director of its Guernsey office.
In his new role, Tracey (pictured) will be pivotal in leading the firm’s Guernsey office as it continues to grow its institutional and private client service range from the jurisdiction, whilst he will also assume additional cross-jurisdictional responsibilities as he takes a seat on JTC’s Institutional Client Services (ICS) Board.
With more than 15 years’ experience in international financial services, Tracey joined JTC in 2015 following the firm’s acquisition of Kleinwort Benson’s fund administration business and has worked in all areas of
SteelEye, a compliance technology and data analytics firm, has published a White Paper outlining its best execution support for MiFID II’s regulatory technical standard, RTS27.
SteelEye has expanded its comprehensive regulatory solution to support the requirement for trading venues to provide quarterly best execution reports and is intended to provide transparency on the most competitive venues on which to trade.
All companies that make markets in all reportable asset classes that periodically publish data relating to the quality of execution will be required to comply with RTS27. This includes trading venues, systematic internalisers (SIs), market makers or other liquidity
Falling prices for cryptocurrencies, and an uncertain regulatory environment, in 2018 haven’t deterred new crypto investment funds from opening, according to new analysis from Crypto Fund Research.
The firm writes that 2018 is on likely to surpass the previous year in terms of the number of crypto fund launches.
Through July 31, Crypto Fund Research writes that there were 96 new crypto hedge funds and venture capital funds, an annual pace of 165. This would surpass the record 156 crypto funds launched in 2017. More than half of all crypto funds currently in existence have launched in just the last
Axioma has appointed Hamish Seegopaul as Managing Director, Head of Index. He was previously a Director at Credit Suisse, where he was responsible for delivering Quantitative Investment Strategies and Commodity Investor Products to institutional investors.
“Hamish brings a superb combination of leadership and experience in both index sales and development to Axioma’s growing indexing business, which leverages our portfolio-construction and risk-modelling expertise to build and enhance systematic strategies,” says Ian Webster, Senior Managing Director. “We are excited about the growth opportunities for this business and delighted to have Hamish taking up the reins.”
In his nine years at Credit
Outsourced trading solutions firm Tourmaline Partners has appointed industry veterans Seth Hoenig and Aidan Toomey as Managing Directors.
Hoenig comes to Tourmaline with 20 years of trading experience and most recently served as Head Trader at Glenhill Capital. He previously worked as a trader at Sigma Capital Management/SAC Capital Advisors and Spear Leeds & Kellogg/Goldman Sachs. Toomey also brings 20 years of trading experience and comes to Tourmaline from outsourced trading firm Outset Global Trading, where he established the firm’s New York office. He has held senior trading roles at HSBC, JPMorgan, Jefferies and Raymond James, and began his
MTS Markets International, part of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), has enhanced its MTS BondsPro corporate bond trading platform with list trading functionality, enabling participants to benefit from the efficiencies of executing many trades simultaneously.
The tool will streamline traders’ ability to execute trades against more than USD17 billion of real-time resting corporate bond liquidity on MTS BondsPro.
After uploading a list of orders to MTS BondsPro, participants can connect with multiple liquidity sources in the platform’s anonymous all-to-all order book and execute on the best price for each trade. List trading delivers significant efficiency benefits to a
