Latest News
Franklin Square Capital Partners, a sponsor of alternative investment products, has hired John Towle as chief marketing officer.
Towle will assume his role effective immediately.
Towle comes to Franklin Square with 25 years of financial services industry experience. Most recently, he served as chief marketing officer for Resource Real Estate, a subsidiary of Resource America, and before that the chief marketing officer at Cole Real Estate Investments.
Towle also worked as director of marketing for ING Mutual Funds and held a number of marketing and sales positions at Fidelity Investments.
“We are pleased to welcome John to the Franklin Square
By Tom Zdon (pictured), Vice President of Business Development and Solutions consulting, Advent Software Inc – With the worldwide market volatility of recent years, new regulation and increased investor due diligence, fund and global asset managers are under pressure to better manage risk, data and reporting.
From a regulatory perspective, FATCA (the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), Solvency II, the Dodd-Frank Act and EMIR (the European Market Infrastructure Regulation) have particularly stood out in recent months for their impact on how funds are managed and on reporting requirements.
From a company workflow standpoint, FATCA has or will impact most procedures
The international derivatives markets of Eurex Group recorded an average daily volume of 10.2 million contracts in September 2012, down from 12.4 million contracts in September 2011.
Of those, 7.5 million were Eurex Exchange contracts (September 2011: 9.1 million), and 2.7 million contracts (September 2011: 3.3 million) were traded at the US-based International Securities Exchange (ISE).
At Eurex Exchange, the equity index derivatives segment totalled 68.9 million contracts (September 2011: 112.6 million). The single largest contract was the future on the Euro Stoxx 50 Index with 30.6 million contracts. The option on this blue chip index totalled 23.5 million contracts.
The CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE) says September 2012 was the most active trading month ever for futures on the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX).
The record trading activity in VIX futures drove total volume at CFE to a new all-time high.
During the month, several new trading records – for both VIX futures and CFE – were set.
In September, average daily volume (ADV) in VIX futures reached a new all-time high of 126,345 contracts, which surpassed the previous record ADV of 102,587 contracts during June 2012. September’s ADV increased by 170 per cent from the 46,784 contracts ADV in September
BlackRock has appointed James Wilkinson as European chief investment officer for the firm’s recently launched global real estate securities platform.
With over 15 years of experience in investing in real estate, Wilkinson (pictured) will be responsible for building and leading an investment team for BlackRock’s real estate securities group in Europe.
Wilkinson will join the team in January 2013 and will report to Mark Howard-Johnson, global head of the real estate securities group.
BlackRock launched the new platform in June with the appointment of Howard-Johnson and Sherry Rexroad, who joined as US chief investment officer.
The platform seeks
KB Associates, a consulting firm to the asset management community, has opened an office in the Cayman Islands.
The new office will provide directorship, company registration and registered office services to Cayman domiciled funds.
Mike Parton will be responsible for leading the development of KB Associates (Cayman) Ltd.
Parton says: "Increasingly investors require independent fund directors to have relevant up-to-date expertise and to devote significant time to each fund in order to properly discharge their duties. As I grow KB Associates’ business in Cayman I will ensure that we make clear measurable commitments to our clients in respect
Recognition of Guernsey’s expertise as a finance centre continues to build in the Far East, according to Fiona Le Poidevin, chief executive of Guernsey Finance, the promotional agency for the island’s finance industry.
Le Poidevin (pictured) was speaking at the culmination of a week-long trip to Hong Kong that saw her meet with some of the Guernsey-based businesses which have offices in the jurisdiction, as well as attend the three-day SuperReturn Asia conference – billed as Asia’s leading private equity funds event.
Le Poidevin said her visits to the Hong Kong operations of Louvre Group, Mourant Ozannes, Newhaven Trust and
The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), the global hedge fund association, has appointed Michelle Noyes as the chief operating officer of its New York office.
Noyes was most recently the head of international sales and investor relations for BRZ Investimentos, one of the largest independent asset managers in Brazil. While in Sao Paulo, she also served as the Brazil representative for AIMA and established the AIMA Brazil network.
Andrew Baker, AIMA’s chief executive, says: “We are delighted to have someone of Michelle’s calibre and experience on board. She made an outstanding contribution towards helping us to establish a strong presence
Bryan Garnier Asset Management (BGAM) has launched the Bryan Garnier Umbrella Fund Sicav.
The fund is domiciled in Malta and externally managed by Bryan Garnier Asset Management in France which is regulated by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF).
Top tier service providers have been selected with Deutsche as custodian, fund administrator and responsible for FX share class hedging while PwC will be the auditor and Lecocq Associate external legal counsel.
Vania Mareuse, managing partner of BGAM, says: “It has taken some time to arrive at this point but we are extremely happy with the structure, the service providers
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed a civil complaint in the federal district court in Boston, Massachusetts, against Boston-based John B Wilson and his company, JBW Capital.
The complaint charges that from July 2007 through at least May 2010, the defendants solicited and obtained at least USD1.8m from approximately 30 participants and acted as commodity pool operators without being registered as such or exempt from CFTC registration.
The CFTC complaint, filed in the US District Court, District of Massachusetts, charges that on 13 September 2008, the defendants sent pool participants an email that falsely represented the pool’s value
