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Well over half (58 per cent) of North American buy-side firms have confirmed that they will need to comply with MiFID II, and yet only 23 per cent feel extremely confident that they have a plan in place, while 77 per cent are either somewhat or not at all confident.
That’s one of the findings of a new poll by SimCorp which focused on the directive’s reach beyond the borders of the European Union. The poll, which canvassed the opinions of more than 150 buy-side participants from across 68 firms, was carried out in conjunction a SimCorp webinar in September
Nicola Wealth Management has launched its NWM Private Debt Fund. This fund combines a fund-of-funds approach with a direct investment in private debt opportunities to earn an attractive premium above public market fixed income yields and returns.
“By partnering with a stable of handpicked sub-managers, we are able to diversify across regions, industries, and strategies to include a wide set of private debt opportunities,” says NWM president, David Sung (pictured). “Nicola Wealth has always focused on an asset allocation that extends beyond typical stocks and bonds to create true diversification. We see great potential in adding private debt to that mix.”
Metamako, a leader in specialist FPGA-enabled high-performance networking platforms, has teamed with Velocimetrics, a provider of intelligent, business flow tracking and performance analytics, to provide MiFID-compliant timestamping.
Metamako’s low-latency, FPGA-enabled network devices will deliver lossless data capture and nanosecond-precision timestamping; Velocimetrics’ VMX monitoring software will consume and analyse the ‘raw’ data to enable financial institutions to measure, monitor and gain deep insight into their business/trade flows with unprecedented speed, accuracy and flexibility.
Velocimetrics already provides applications for end-to-end visibility of trading data through its VMX EndtoEnd offering, and now the collaboration enables capital market firms to deploy a solution that
CME Group is planning to launch bitcoin futures in Q4 2017, pending regulatory approval. The new contract will be cash-settled, based on the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR) which serves as a once-a-day reference rate of the U.S. dollar price of bitcoin.
Bitcoin futures will be listed on and subject to the rules of CME.
“Given increasing client interest in the evolving cryptocurrency markets, we have decided to introduce a bitcoin futures contract,” says Terry Duffy (pictured), CME Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “As the world’s largest regulated FX marketplace, CME Group is the natural home for this
By Jay Peller (pictured), Citco Fund Services – In recent years, established alternative fund managers have increasingly migrated business to fund administrators with a broad geographic footprint and extensive product expertise. The cost pressures faced by most managers in a low return environment have also been translated into continuing demands to improve efficiency.
The good news is that allocations to alternatives are growing globally with private equity seeing the most robust gains. The combination of rising assets, globalisation and increasing complexity has created a ripple effect for fund administrators. The need to deliver operational excellence to asset managers, while boosting
With offices in 35 locations worldwide, Apex Fund Services has grown into one of the financial industry’s largest independent fund administrators since it first opened its doors in Bermuda back in 2003.
And with plans to make upwards of 10 acquisitions within the next 24 months, Apex has its sights set on becoming a top five global fund administration group within the next five years.
This follows the recent announcement this summer that Genstar Capital, a leading middle-market private equity firm, has recapitalised Apex, whilst simultaneously acquiring Equinoxe Investment Services and merging it into the Apex Group.
“FTV Capital, a
One of the dangers of analysing consolidation trends in the fund administration space is that all firms are treated on a similar footing. However, rather than tarring them all with the same brush, the industry needs to separate the actions of investment bank-owned administrators from those owned by the large, traditional custodial banks and those operated by non-banking independent organisations.
“Custodial banks continue to invest in this space,” says Christine Waldron (pictured), global head of the Alternative Investment Solutions team at U.S. Bancorp Fund Services. “I do think investment banks, which have historically driven their revenues off of transaction-based services,
On 19 October 2017, Deutsche Bank announced that they had sold their Alternative Fund Services business to Apex Fund Services (`Apex’). It is the latest example of consolidation in the alternative fund industry as organisations decide whether to stick or twist in the fee-based – as opposed to transaction-based – world of asset servicing, where margins are less attractive that investing banking activities.
The transaction will add USD170 billion in AUA, propelling Apex to become the eighth largest administrator in the world and the largest independent administrator.
Peter Hughes, Founder and CEO of Apex, says that the aim is to
By George Ralph, RFA – A recent study by Watchguard Technologies of 1,600 organisations also found that only 10 per cent believed they were 100 per cent prepared for the regulations to pass into law. That’s 90 per cent who do not feel prepared, or are unsure if the regulations even apply to them.
With the May 2018 deadline looming, the 48 per cent of organisations who said they are seeking, or will be seeking advice, really need to do so quickly.
But what are the key things firms should be doing?
As GDPR places important new obligations on any
Stone Harbor Investment Partners, an independent global fixed-income investment firm focused on credit risk strategies and asset allocation, has launched the Emerging Markets Explorer Strategy, a concentrated, high conviction, unconstrained strategy in emerging markets debt.
The Emerging Markets Explorer Strategy is managed in a concentrated, total return style and primarily invests in fixed income securities selected from the emerging markets debt asset classes of hard currency sovereign debt, corporate credit, local duration and EM FX.
The Strategy will be managed by the Stone Harbor Emerging Markets team who have a long history of investing in emerging markets through various
