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The International Capital Market Association (ICMA), a trade body for the international debt capital markets, has published a legal opinion on the enforceability and validity of the Global Master Repurchase Agreement (GMRA) in Russia.
The GMRA is the most widely used legal agreement for documenting cross-border repo transactions and is also used in many domestic repo markets.
ICMA commissions legal opinions from law firms every year on the enforceability of the GMRA, its transfer of title provisions and its netting in insolvency mechanism for transactions with banks and other entities. For the first time the Russian opinion joins legal
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC) corporate actions pilot programme has begun systemic client testing of ISO 20022 messages covering the full entitlement and allocation lifecycle for distribution events.
The pilot for distribution events, launched in September 2012, is part of DTCC’s multi-year corporate actions reengineering initiative that will replace DTCC’s proprietary files with ISO 20022 messages.
For the first several months of the pilot, DTCC produced sample ISO 20022 distribution messages, enabling clients to understand and validate the message formats and business flows.
Beginning today, DTCC, through its subsidiary The Depository Trust Company (DTC), will start a parallel
The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), the global hedge fund association, has appointed two deputy chairmen from its existing directors and an investor-appointee to the AIMA Council.
The new deputy chairmen are Andrew Bastow (pictured), head of government and regulatory affairs and general counsel, Winton Capital Management; and Chris Pearce, Asia chief operating officer, Marshall Wace Asia.
The new investor-appointee is Robert De Rito, head of financial risk management, APG Asset Management US.
Bastow has been Winton’s general counsel since 2005 and is responsible for spearheading the firm’s engagement with regulatory bodies and lawmakers in Europe, the US and
Scoach, the joint trading platform for structured products in Switzerland and Germany operated by SIX Swiss Exchange and Deutsche Börse, is to close after SIX terminated the cooperation contract between the two exchanges.
Due to this termination of the cooperation contract the joint venture will end on 30 June 2013.
The markets brought into the venture will be returned to their parent companies.
ICAP has launched i-Swap, its electronic interest rate derivative platform in the US for trading of US Dollar interest rate swaps (IRS).
Barclays, BofA Merrill Lynch, Citi, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan are supporting i-Swap by providing streaming prices.
An additional 30 banking and investing institutions have access to trading on the platform. Initial levels of participation on the platform were encouraging and are expected to increase over the course of the coming weeks and months.
i-Swap is a trading platform for interest rate derivatives that enables customers to choose optimal execution methods, either through a broker or directly
The Isle of Man Government has set a new standard in tax transparency by agreeing the main details of an automatic information exchange package with the UK.
The measures represent a closer form of tax cooperation with the UK based on the same principles as the FATCA agreement which the Isle of Man is negotiating with the US.
Under the arrangement the Isle of Man and UK Government will automatically share a wide range of financial information on their taxpayers. This information will be reported on an annual basis.
As part of the cooperation package the Isle of Man
IntraLinks has launched a cloud-based investor communication platform, IntraLinks Investor Portals, designed to allow hedge funds, private equity and real estate managers to better differentiate their brands, meet the transparency demands of institutional investors and compete effectively for assets.
Scalable, secure, and easy to use, the Investor Portals platform will be premiered at two alternative investment trade shows, SuperReturn International 2013 in Berlin on 26 February and at the iGlobal Real Estate Private Equity Summit on 6 March.
"As institutional investors continue to allocate to alternative investments, the rules of engagement – marketing, reporting and client service- are changing quickly,"
All bar two of the 13 Edhec-Risk Alternative Indices produced positive returns in January, with only short-selling (-4.92 per cent) and merger arbitrage (-0.30 per cent) ending the month in negative territory.
The performance of hedge fund strategies exposed to the equity risk factor was the highest in the last eight months of a firmly-established positive trend, and furthermore exhibited a strong alpha component (long/short equity: 3.40 per cent, equity market neutral: 1.60 per cent, event-driven: 2.26 per cent).
Convertible arbitrage returned a steady 1.55 per cent, with strong sensitivities to credit and convertible bonds outweighing a slight short exposure
Options, the provider of the Options PIPE Private Financial Cloud services platform for the exchange, banking, trading and investment communities, is to open an office in Chicago next month.
Scheduled to open on 1 March, Options’ Chicago office will enable the firm to better serve the growing number of regional clients, as well as to communicate with proprietary trade firms in the area.
Options has had a presence in the Chicago area since 2007 when it began offering co-location services at the Cermak datacenter facility.
The Chicago office will expand Options’ presence in major global financial markets which include New
New York-based Orange Capital has issued a letter to the board of directors of Strategic Hotels & Resorts urging for an immediate sale of the company.
Orange Capital is making this letter public after failing to receive an adequate response from Strategic’s board of directors.
Orange Capital is the beneficial owner of 6.25 million shares of Strategic common stock.
Orange Capital believes the sale of Strategic’s properties would likely result in proceeds of USD11-14 per share, a 40-79 per cent premium over the most recent closing price. Orange’s valuation is based upon a property level analysis using capitalisation rates, replacement
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