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The State Street Global Investor Confidence Index decreased to 96.9 in October, down 7.5 points from September’s revised reading of 104.4.
The decline in sentiment was driven by an 8.7 point drop in the North American ICI to 96.8, along with a 6.7 point fall in the Asian ICI to 96.2 and a 0.7 point decrease in the European ICI to 93.1.
The Investor Confidence Index was developed by Kenneth Froot (pictured), and Paul O’Connell at State Street Associates, State Street Global Exchange’s research and advisory services business. It measures investor confidence or risk appetite quantitatively by analysing the
Lodbrok Capital, an investment manager focused on the European credit market, has appointed Adam Sorab as Partner. This follows a period of organic growth and the successful launch of the Lodbrok European Credit Opportunities Fund in May 2017.
Sorab (pictured), joins from hedge fund CQS, where he spent the last 13 years and where he held various senior roles including Head of Investor Relations.
Lodbrok Capital has hired Sorab to lead the company’s investor relations with responsibility for managing client relationships. Sorab brings over 30 years’ investment industry experience to the firm. Prior to CQS, Sorab was Head of
QuantHouse’s QuantFEED and QuantLINK are now available via Virtu Financial’s disclosed Systematic Internaliser (SI) platform enabling clients to access Virtu’s liquidity under MiFID II’s transparent SI regime.
Virtu Financial is one of the largest electronic market makers, providing liquidity to the global equity, ETF, Energy, and FX markets and is raising the bar on transparency by providing bilateral liquidity in European cash equities to sell side firms in Europe by utilising MiFID II’s SI regime. Virtu Financial Ireland Limited intends to register as a Systematic Internaliser (SI) in Europe in 2018.
For many years QuantHouse has been successful in
NetCurrency.com, a fintech startup company based in Hong Kong, has released a beta version of Neco, a digital currency for global forex trading and asset management, a USD5 trillion daily market.
Net Currency (Neco, or NTC) is a geo-political neutral digital currency portfolio monetary system, and fundamentally different from crypto-currency or virtual currency such as Bitcoin. Net Currency is not issued by any central bank nor generated by computer algorithms, instead it is issued and funded by a community of users and consists of a portfolio of underlying world sovereign currencies, with percentages of each currency agreed upon by its members.
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
