Latest News
Cantor Fitzgerald Europe has added to its credit fixed income sales and trading team with the appointment of Sara Simmons and Per Mortensen as managing directors based in London.
Simmons will focus on sales for investment grade, emerging markets, high yield and bank capital products in Benelux, Austria and Switzerland, while Mortensen will focus on sales of investment grade and high yield products in Scandinavia and Germany.
"We are pleased and excited to welcome Sara and Per, two highly respected and connected professionals to the team," says Shawn P Matthews, chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. "Their
Traiana’s Harmony network, the firm’s global product for equities swaps/CFD markets, is now live in the Asia Pacific region.
The demand for the equity swap network in Asia is a reflection of the change in behaviour in this market, the growing volumes in the give-up market, increased access by global buy-side firms as well as focus on straight-through-processing servicing by global synthetic equity prime brokers.
Buy-side firms are using the product to access markets such as China and India for the first time, building on their existing activity in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. Prime brokers leading the
EDHEC-Risk Institute has appointed five new members to its international advisory board.
The board brings together scholars, representatives of regulatory bodies as well as senior executives from business partners and other leading institutions.
The role of the international advisory board is to validate the relevance and goals of the research programme proposals presented by the institute’s management and to evaluate research outcomes with respect to their potential impact on industry practices.
The 48 members of the board also advise on the objectives and contents of projects deriving from the expertise of the institute, thereby ensuring that graduate and
Franklin Templeton Investments has launched its first multi-manager, multi-strategy mutual fund focused on alternative investment strategies, Franklin K2 Alternative Strategies Fund (FAAAX).
Building upon Franklin Templeton's acquisition of hedge fund solutions provider K2 Advisors in 2012, this US-registered fund provides access to a diversified portfolio of alternative investment strategies managed by institutional-quality hedge fund managers.
The fund seeks to provide investors with lower correlations to traditional asset classes, reduced portfolio volatility and attractive risk-adjusted returns, while offering daily liquidity.
As the fund's investment manager, K2 Advisors will allocate assets across multiple managers and alternative strategies, including event driven,
Morningstar is to make eVestment separate account and hedge fund data available to users of Morningstar Direct, the company's investment analysis platform for institutional investors.
eVestment's database of more than 22,000 separate accounts and 23,000 hedge funds will be available for an additional annual fee to Direct users in 2014.
"The eVestment data complements Morningstar's institutional data, and will provide Direct users with an even larger pool of separate accounts and hedge funds with significant depth and history of information," says Xiaohua Xia, senior vice president of institutional software at Morningstar. "We are pleased to be able to offer
Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) has expanded the frequency for disseminating values on its recently created CBOE Short-term Volatility Index (VXST index).
VXST index values now are generally disseminated every 15 seconds during the trading day versus once a day previously, allowing traders to track intra-day volatility of the index.
Short-term VIX index values are available on CBOE's website at www.cboe.com/VXST and through quote data vendors.
CBOE began disseminating values on the Short-term VIX index on 1 October. Like CBOE's flagship CBOE Volatility Index (VIX index), the Short-term VIX index reflects investors' consensus view of expected stock market
Hedge funds gained 1.80 per cent in October, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge.
The index is up 9.15 per cent year to date.
“Investors correctly anticipated that a deal would be worked out to resolve the partial US government shutdown and debt ceiling debate," says Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge.
Fifteen of Barclay’s 18 hedge fund indices had gains in October. Equity Long Bias gained 2.58 per cent, European Equities were up 2.48 per cent, Emerging Markets gained 2.22 per cent, the Event Driven Index rose 2.11 per cent, and Distressed
Volante Technologies has launched its SWIFT Funds Migration Accelerator, which is designed to increase firms’ readiness to support ISO 20022 funds message types.
In November 2015, SWIFT will remove the ISO 15022 funds message templates from SWIFTNet.
The 2015 end-migration date, mandated by SWIFT is supplemented by a programme of financial disincentives currently being incurred by firms who continue to use ISO 15022.
For non-ISO 20022-compliant firms, penalties and increased message costs are only set to continue to impact margins.
The SWIFT Funds Migration Accelerator is an off-the-shelf product which includes pre-defined structures of the SWIFT MT
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has obtained a federal court consent Order against MF Global requiring it to pay USD1.212 billion to cover customer losses sustained when the company failed in 2011.
The consent Order, entered on 8 November, 2013 by US District Court Judge Victor Marrero of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, also imposes a USD100 million civil monetary penalty on MF Global, to be paid after MF Global has fully paid customers and certain other creditors entitled to priority under bankruptcy law. The Trustee for MF Global obtained permission from the
BGC Partners, a brokerage company servicing the wholesale financial and real estate markets, has launched a European power desk.
Based in London, BGC's European power desk will focus on brokering power products in the French, German and Polish markets.
The launch highlights BGC's growing energy practice, which includes its oil options, softs and base metal teams in London, BGC Radix Energy in Asia, as well as its US energy derivatives desk, environmental energy commodities desk, and Houston-based electricity, natural gas and environmental group.
"BGC has steadily increased its focus on energy, a sector we believe offers plenty of
