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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
ConvergEx Group, a provider of global brokerage and trading-related services, has appointed Oliver Bailly as a senior vice president and head of its ETF desk.
Miguel Ruiz has joined the firm as a senior vice president on its global portfolio desk.
Based in New York, Bailly and Ruiz will report to James Bossert and Sean Wagner, co-heads of ConvergEx’s global portfolio and ETF execution business.
"Oliver and Miguel are highly respected professionals and bring a wealth of ETF and portfolio expertise to ConvergEx Group," says Craig Lax (pictured), ConvergEx Group executive managing director and head of global
Global Prime Partners is to offer Liquid Group’s Liquid platform to its portfolio of existing European clients as well as all new prime brokerage clients, becoming the exclusive prime brokerage partner of Liquid in Europe.
Global Prime Partners has also selected the Liquid platform to monitor its firm-wide risk exposure to its prime brokerage clients, including hedge funds and other asset managers.
Global Prime Partners will gain access to the Liquid platform’s set of real-time front-office and data management services powered by Liquid’s private cloud, providing clients with technology to help decide what to trade, place the trade,
Hedge funds posted gains in September with the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index up 0.96 per cent and the HFRX Market Directional Index up 2.23 per cent.
The HFRX Event Driven Index posted a gain of 2.10 per cent for September, led by gains in special situations and activist exposures. The index leads all strategy indices with a YTD gain of 10.87 per cent.
The HFRX Special Situations Index gained 2.96 per cent for the month, the strongest gain since January and leading all sub-strategy indices with a YTD gain of 4.2 per cent. The index had specific
