Latest News
Peppercomm Strategic Communications has acquired Walek & Associates, an independent financial, capital markets and investor relations firm.
The move combines Peppercomm’s full suite of integrated marketing and communications offerings, including creative design, digital, social media, experiential and strategic licensing, with Walek’s concentrated expertise in asset management, capital markets and investor relations.
The announcement comes on the heels of Peppercomm’s recent acquisition of Janine Gordon & Associates and the formation of JGAPeppercomm, a specialty group focused on the consumer lifestyle and non-profit sectors. Together, these two acquisitions are part of Peppercomm’s move to deepen the firm’s expertise in key
Deutsche Börse will act as the exclusive licensor of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) market data and information products to all international clients.
The new cooperation will benefit existing and potential customers by giving them access to both exchanges’ market data products under a single license agreement. A signing ceremony was held in Frankfurt on 2 October 2013.
The partnership also allows Deutsche Börse to deepen its client service capabilities in important Asian markets such as India, as well as strengthen the strategic alliance between the two exchanges.
“By partnering with BSE we give customers access to the
EDHEC-Risk Institute and Lyxor are launching a three-year research chair entitled “Risk Allocation Solutions” to develop academic insights that can be used towards the design of high-performance multi-asset investment solutions, based on specific investor needs.
Year one will focus on the next generation of risk parity, which may suffer from one major shortcoming, namely the fact that it is not explicitly sensitive to changes in economic conditions.
To find optimal ways to allocate risk budgets in investors’ portfolio construction, EDHEC-Risk Institute will in particular develop a dynamic risk allocation approach through three major topics:
• Extending standard
US-dollar prime money market funds (MMFs) have increased their total exposure to European financial institutions by 16 per cent (USD27bn) in the first two months of Q3 2013, says Moody’s Investors Service.
Most of this increase is due to higher exposures to Swedish and French banks, which rose by 40 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.
Within Euro-denominated MMFs, exposure to European financial institutions remained stable, albeit with significant country shifts, while Sterling MMFs reduced their exposure to the euro area by 6.5 per cent (GBP3.2bn).
US domiciled USD funds increased assets under management (AUMs) by
Investor Analytics sees ESMA’s recently updated guidelines as firmly placing risk statistics like value-at-risk and sensitivity analysis as mandatory requirements for AIFMD reporting.
Investor Analytics has seen a tremendous increase in clients’ interest to better understand the risk reporting requirements of Annex IV, which is part of the sweeping Alternative Investment Funds Manager Directive (AIFMD).
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has recently responded to stakeholders’ questions and has clarified the reporting requirements for alternative investment fund managers to include a wide array of risk analytics.
Highlights of the 1 October final report issued by ESMA
FINMA, the Swiss financial regulator, is currently conducting investigations into several Swiss financial institutions in connection with possible manipulation of foreign exchange markets.
FINMA is coordinating closely with authorities in other countries as multiple banks around the world are potentially implicated.
FINMA will give no further details on the investigations or the banks potentially involved.
Kinetic Partners is now offering a global background checking service to complement its investor led fund, fund manager and service provider operational due diligence (ODD) services.
Individuals applicable for background investigation may include a fund manager’s chief executive officer, portfolio manager/chief investment officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer or independent fund directors.
The scope of background checks will include criminal, education, employment, credit and civil checks amongst other areas and the scope will vary according to location of that individual and the firm.
Quentin Thom, director, Kinetic Partners, says: “As our global due diligence offering continues
Glynn Barwick (pictured), regulatory lawyer and counsel for Goodwin Procter LLP’s Financial Services Practice in London, comments on the ESMA’s final guidelines for AIFM reporting requirements…
On 1 October 2013 ESMA published a press release titled "ESMA clarifies reporting requirements for Alternative Fund Managers " to accompany its final guidelines report on the reporting obligations for AIFMs under the AIFM Directive. In fact, in one critical area the final guidelines are far from clear. This is the section which relates to the transitional period.
ESMA had previously suggested that managers exempt during the transitional period should still be required to report
Alternative UCITS funds made advances of 0.65 per cent in September to leave them exactly +2 per cent on a year-to-date basis, according to Alix Capital’s UCITS Alternative Index Global.
The best performing strategy was equity long/short, gaining +1.61 per cent last month to leave it +6.96 per cent YTD; way ahead of the next best performing strategy – event driven – which recorded further gains of +0.93 per cent to leave it +2.79 per cent YTD. The UAI Emerging Markets Index also did well in September, up +1.19 per cent. Four strategies found the markets to be challenging however.
Trading volume in CBOE’s SPXpm – S&P 500 Index options that are PM-settled – established an all-time daily volume record this week as 54,611 contracts changed hands.
Wednesday’s record surpassed the previous daily volume record of 39,472 SPXpm contracts traded on 21 June 2013.
In February, SPXpm options trading moved from C2 Options Exchange’s (C2) all-electronic environment to CBOE’s hybrid model to expose SPXpm to a broader base of users, including the SPX trading crowd on CBOE’s trading floor. The migration of SPXpm unified all of CBOE’s S&P 500 products on a single exchange.
CBOE’s S&P 500
Special Reports
FeatureD
- Insight
