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The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and an affiliate for various systemic breakdowns in their regulatory and compliance functions as a self-regulatory organisation, including a failure to enforce or even fully comprehend rules to prevent abusive short selling.
CBOE has agreed to pay a USD6m penalty and implement major remedial measures to settle the SEC’s charges. The financial penalty is the first assessed against an exchange for violations related to its regulatory oversight. Previous financial penalties against exchanges involved misconduct on the business side of their operations.
Self-regulatory organisations (SROs) must
Thornburg Investment Management (TIM), the USD87bn asset manager, has opened an office in London to enhance its global distribution capabilities.
TIM has appointed Chris Elsmark and Karim Elfar to the newly-created positions of joint managing directors in the firm’s new London office.
The two will lead Thornburg Global Advisors, the London-based entity responsible for the firm’s institutional and professional investor market outside the US. They will report to Peter Trevisani, Thornburg’s head of global distribution and president of Thornburg Global Investment, the Irish-domiciled UCITS range of funds.
Elsmark and Elfar will have the primary responsibility for developing
ALTIN, the Swiss alternative investment company, is currently evaluating different options to implement the share buyback programme announced in March 2013 to acquire up to 10 per cent of the share capital.
Switzerland’s recent amendments to its stock exchange legislation affect the way share buybacks are implemented. A revision of the Stock Exchange Ordinance (SESTO) that has come into force on 1 May 2013 limits daily share buybacks to 25 per cent of the average daily volume without granting a general permission for off-exchange transactions (block trades).
Given the relatively low trading volume on investment companies such as
May was a quiet month in terms of price movements for fine wine although volumes remained reasonable.
The Liv-ex 100 index fell by 0.3 per cent and the Liv-ex Investables was exactly flat at 0.0 per cent, according to The Wine Investment Fund (TWIF).
The flat market came despite a three per cent strengthening in the Chinese renminbi against sterling, which should have boosted prices. This was, however, counterbalanced by a slight weakening of the Japanese yen.
The 2012 en primeur season concluded with little change from the earlier pattern of generally disappointing sales due to the
Torstone Technology, a provider of securities and derivatives processing software to the global financial markets, recently showed that its Inferno back office system is capable of processing one million transactions per hour.
Working at Arrow Electronics’s Oracle-authorised solution centre in the City and using the Oracle Exadata machine, Torstone Technology’s tests were focused on equities and bonds to represent typical asset classes for a high volume business. The results gave a range of 240 to 300 transactions per second.
Brian Collings, chief executive of Torstone Technology, says: “Tier 1 investment banks are asking what the upper limit of
Lyxor Asset Management has appointed Gilbert Tse as head of Lyxor for Asia.
Based in Hong Kong, Tse has a reporting line to Pierre Gil, Lyxor’s head of international development.
In this newly created role, Tse will be responsible for coordinating Lyxor businesses in the whole of Asia, especially Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Korea, and for strengthening global co-operation with Fortune SG Fund Management, Lyxor’s Chinese joint venture.
Tse will further strengthen Lyxor’s team in Asia as a global asset manager with the capabilities to provide innovative investment solutions tailored-made in all asset classes. He will
Liquidnet, the institutional trading network, has reported a series of Asia Pacific trading records in May, including a record month of principal traded and the highest volume traded in a single day, since launching in the region five years ago.
The company, which operates in 10 markets across Asia Pacific, recorded USD2.16bn in principal traded for May while also seeing USD287m traded across a single day. Additional trading records set last month include:
• Highest volume traded across a single week with USD721m in principal traded;
• Largest volume traded in Hong Kong equities on a single day,
Argonaut Capital Partners, a specialist in managing European equities, has appointed George Adam as regional sales manager.
Adam joins the firm from Cazenove Capital Management, where he was a discretionary sales manager with responsibility for the North of England, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Ireland.
He formerly held positions with Aegon Asset Management as a business development consultant and RBS, where he was an investment manager. Adam has also enjoyed spells with Standard Life Investments, F&C Investments and First State Investments.
Adam will be responsible for accounts in the North of England, Scotland and Ireland. In
Phase 1 of Dodd Frank commenced in March this year, requiring swap dealers and major swap participants to clear their OTC derivative contracts (i.e. liquid IRS and CDS) through central counterparties (CCPs). With Phase 2 commencing in June, buy-side firms in the US are now fully engaged in getting operationally ready.
The shift towards OTC clearing is a huge collective undertaking for clearing houses, clearing firms and buy-side clients. The use of a CCP is a mutualised risk model that shifts the market away from what were exclusively bilateral arrangements – under Master Agreement and Credit Support Annex (CSA) –
Four of the largest over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives clearing brokers have confirmed their support for the Clearing Connectivity Standard (CCS) initiative to standardise reporting for cleared OTC derivatives.
As part of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has mandated certain OTC derivative products be centrally cleared. 10 June is the second of three CFTC mandated clearing implementation dates for the industry in 2013.
CCS is an industry standard that helps improve OTC derivatives reporting and communication for asset managers, clearing brokers, custodians, and service providers. In 2012, CCS was endorsed by the International
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