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NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Borse have both agreed to a mutual termination of the business combination agreement originally signed by the companies on 15 February, 2011.
The move comes following the recently announced decision by the European Commission to block the proposed merger of the two firms.
International law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is to add two partners to its London funds practice. Tim Pearce and Ian Meade will join the firm from Simmons & Simmons.
Their arrival at Akin Gump will significantly expand the firm’s London practice which advises leading funds and fund managers on a broad range of issues, investment products and asset classes, including fund formation and financial services regulation and compliance, as well as their business activities more generally.
Tim and Ian will also work closely with the firm’s market-leading international funds teams and clients in New York,
The global mining giant Xstrata plc has confirmed that it has received an approach from and is in discussions with commodities giant Glencore International plc regarding an all share merger of equals “which may or may not lead to an offer being made by Glencore for Xstrata.” A combined group could be valued at about USD82 billion.
In accordance with Rule 2.6(a) of the (UK) City Code on Takeovers and Mergers (the “Code”), Glencore (which already owns 34.4% of Xstrata) is now required, by no later than 5:00 p.m. on 1 March 2012, to either announce a firm intention to
ML Capital will be launching two new UCITs funds this quarter on the MontLake Platform. As well as the the launch of the Goldwinds Global Macro UCITS Fund on 13 February – as previously reported in a Hedgeweek exclusive on 29 January – ML Capital is also due to launch the RP Systematic Emerging Market UCITS Fund on 1 March.
The two launches will bring the MontLake UCITS platform AUM to over USD100 million.
The RP Systematic Emerging Market UCITS Fund will be managed by RP Capital UK Ltd, with Apostolos Avlonitis and Constantinos Giachalis responsible for managing the day
NYSE Euronext announced today that in light of the decision by the European Commission to prohibit its proposed combination with Deutsche Boerse, the companies are in discussions to terminate their merger agreement.
NYSE Euronext said it would focus on the successful standalone strategy that has delivered strong growth and diversification of its core businesses and that it would leverage its financial strength to return capital to shareholders. In that regard, NYSE Euronext announced its intent to resume a USD550 million share repurchase program following the termination of the merger agreement and after the release of its fourth quarter and 2011 year-end
Silk Road Management has launched the Silk Road Iraq Index (SILKIQ) and Silk Road Iraq Oil Index (SILKIO), two debut equity indices that include largest Iraq-focused companies, listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange (ISX) as well as international bourses in London, Toronto and Oslo.
The Silk Road Iraq Index currently covers 26 companies with total market capitalisation of USD12.8 billion (January 1, 2012). The Silk Road Iraq Oil index contains seven internationally listed oil & gas companies with assets and operations in Iraq with total market capitalisation of US$9.6 billion (January 1, 2012). In the first month of this year alone,
In January 2012, the international derivatives exchanges of Eurex Group recorded an average daily volume of 8.2 million contracts (Jan 2011: 10.4 million).
Of those, 5.5 million were Eurex Exchange contracts (Jan 2011: 7.1 million), and 2.7 million contracts were at the US-based International Securities Exchange (ISE) (Jan 2011: 3.3 million). In total, 174.1 million contracts were traded, thereof 120.3 million at Eurex and 53.8 million at the ISE.
Eurex Exchange grew slightly in its equity index segment, the largest product segment, to 59.8 million contracts compared with 59.2 million contracts in January 2011. Futures on the EURO STOXX 50®
Independent fund of hedge funds manager Arden Asset Management, has selected HedgeMark Risk Analytics LLC, a division of HedgeMark International LLC, to provide position level risk reporting and data aggregation. Arden made its decision following an extensive review of industry risk specialists.
HedgeMark Risk Analytics is jointly led by Andrew Lapkin and Tom Brown (pictured). Lapkin is a globally recognised pioneer in hedge fund risk management, and came to HedgeMark more than a year ago from Measurisk, a firm he co-founded in 1998. Brown, a founding member of HedgeMark, joined in 2009 from Nuveen. Prior to Nuveen, he led the
European Multilateral Clearing Facility (EMCF), Europe’s largest cash equity CCP, is offering the lowest clearing price available in Europe. Participants clearing more than 2 million trades per day will be charged EUR0.001 per trade for all of their business. The new fee equates to a lower rate than the clearing and netting fee for the same amount of business in the US or anywhere else in the world.
This upgrade – which will be effective as of 01 March 2012 – confirms EMCF’s commitment to be the best-priced CCP service provider at all volumes.
The new bands provide incentives for
Global assets under management of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) increased for the third year running in 2011 to a record USD4.8 trillion, according to TheCityUK’s report: Sovereign Wealth Funds 2012.
There was an additional USD7.2 trillion held in other sovereign investment vehicles, such as pension reserve funds, development funds and state-owned corporations’ funds and USD8.1 trillion in other official foreign exchange reserves.
In the past six year’s the UK has attracted 17% of total global SWF investments, second only to the USA 919%) and more than France,m Germany and Spain combined.
TheCityUK’s projections are for SWFs’ assets to grow by
