-
Cement is one of the world’s most widely used and traded materials. Yet all attempts to offer futures on it have failed. Ben Beasley-Murray investigates.
-
New contracts typically struggle to succeed. And they struggle all the more when times are tough. But, as Colin Packham discovers, while the majority of most new contracts in 2009 failed to attract interest, there were some notable winners, particularly in China.
-
BM&F Bovespa and CETIP are readying a series of initiatives that should incentivise diversity in an equity options market dominated by just two names. Elise Coroneos reports.
-
The need for speed and the race to drive down latency has been one of the most keenly fought contests of 2009. As Mike West reports, there is every indication that this trend is set to continue.
-
With a record 3.6bn equity options contracts traded last year and some nine exchanges serving the market by the end of the year, is there room for more growth? Elise Coroneos reports.
-
John Damgard’s letter campaigning against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's proposed position limits on speculative energy trading contains the familiar arguments against controls on speculation.
-
India. Long on potential but often seen as short on delivery. But that traditional view of the country’s commodity derivatives markets is changing fast. Colin Packham reports on their rapid, if bumpy, ride to success.
-
The Copenhagen summit was a heavy blow to the hopes of environmentalists – and to prospects for a much bigger global carbon market. But emissions traders are taking it in their stride, as Siân Williams discovers.
-
In a move that startled the listed derivatives markets the world's largest futures broker, MF Global, announced that Jon Corzine would replace Bernie Dan as its CEO.
-
If the authorities compel clearing of OTC derivatives, they will be making a big mistake, argues Ruben Lee. The policy is likely to create problems, rather than solve them.
-
The exceptional surge in Brazilian interest rate futures trading last week was caused by uncertainty over the future of the Brazilian central bank’s rate setting team, a source has told FOW.
-
Market players on the continet have welcomed Eurex's decision to became the world’s first exchange to conduct its risk management fully in real time.
-
On March 2, FOW travelled to São Paulo to offer a unique forum for the key players in the Latin American derivatives market, exploring the opportunities and challenges currently facing in the region.
-
Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said in a speech to the European Parliament’s that reform of the way over-the-counter derivatives are regulated must be “comprehensive and international”.
-
Argentina’s leading futures exchanges, the Mercado a Término de Buenos Aires and Rosario Futures Exchange, are holding talks on a possible merger, FOW has learned.
-
Newedge, the derivatives broker owned by Société Générale and Crédit Agricole, announced a reorganisation of its business yesterday at the annual Futures Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
-
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has today published two reports designed to improve understanding of how collateral is used to mitigate credit risk in the over the counter derivative markets.
-
Mercado Mexicano de Derivados’s order routing deal with CME Group will aim to match that of its neighbour BM&F Bovespa’s, MexDer CEO Jorge Alegría has told FOW.
-
Advent Software updated its turnkey portfolio accounting and reporting suite at the end of January to Axys 3.8 which is compatible with the new reference system for options, which recently came into place called the Options Symbology Initiative (OSI). The update enhances the system to support the 2010 OSI, which is an overhaul of the old five-character options symbol which switched over to a 21 digit system on February 12.
-
Charles Li Xiaojia succeeded Chow Manyiu as chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, in mid-January. Li will be the first chief executive of HKEx with a mainland Chinese background, having been educated in China and then the US. He was chairman of JP Morgan China from 2003 to 2009 and a non-executive director of the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.
-
New Zealand Bank ASB has gone live with Calypso to provide integrated trading, processing and risk management. The treasury platform is cross-asset and can process front and back office reports and manage risk for foreign exchange, money market and interest rate derivatives trading.
-
Rod Banus, head of futures Asia Pacific at Barclays Capital, has left the bank. Officials in Singapore have not yet been told plans for his replacement.
-
Bursa Malaysia and Bahrain Financial Exchange (BFX) have signed a commercial agreement to provide financial products to Islamic market participants and strengthen bilateral ties between the two.
-
The China Financial Futures Exchange (CFFE) has approved 13 new members including Chinese brokerages and Morgan Stanley. This brings the total number of members to 124 including 15 full members, 61 clearing only members and 48 trading members.
-
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has recommended that ICE Futures US should expand its regulatory oversight team after concluding that its compliance team was under “notable strain”.
-
CME Group will acquire 90% of Dow Jones Indexes in a joint venture which will leave Dow Jones with a 10% stake. Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp, will gain $607.5m for 90% of the business, which the deal values at $675m. CME Group will contribute some market data services, which it has valued at $607.5m, to the joint venture.
-
Salvatore ‘Chicco’ di Stasi has been appointed global head of corporate equity derivatives at UBS in London. He reports to Matthew Koder, head of global capital markets, and to Jason Barron, global head of equity derivatives.
-
Those who claim it is cheaper to engage in derivatives over the counter than through a central clearing counterparty are not taking the cost of credit risk into account, according to a study by the European Energy Exchange.
-
The European Commission will revise internet security guidelines following cyber attacks on the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) registries in January.
-
HSBC has joined the trading platform offered by FFastFill, the futures trading software provider.
-
First Derivatives announced mid-February that it has bought the Dublin internet trading firm Cognotec out of receivership. It paid Eu3.4m ($4.6m) for the company. Cognotec was once worth more than Eu150m and employed 200 people, but its value fell in 2007 after it lost its biggest customer. The company was placed in receivership on January 22. It owed about Eu6.9m to Barclays Bank. Cognotec was founded 20 years ago by Brian Maccaba, one of the legendary pioneers of using the internet for foreign exchange trading.
-
Low-latency service provider Fixnetix has announced that its targets for 2010 include growing its multi-asset trading business, expanding the firm’s US operations and moving into the Asia Pacific region.The company more than doubled in size in 2009 when it acquired Market Systems Technology, the Boston-based feed handler and ticker plant provider.
-
Xtrakter, the post trade reporting service, has gained the approval of the UK Financial Services Authority for regulatory reporting of exchange traded derivatives, using alternative instrument identifiers (AII).
-
HKEx’s technically revamped automatic matching and execution management AMS/3 has become operational. Order processing capacity of AMS/3 has been doubled to 3,000 orders per second and the average end-to-end system response time halved to 0.15 seconds as a result of the upgrade. The upgraded trading system supports 21.6m orders and 7.5m trades in a standard four-hour trading day.
-
Intercontinental exchange (ICE) has started using Logicscope TradeSTP for real-time post-trade processing.
-
The Securities and Exchange Board of India has approved in principle the introduction of physically delivered equity derivatives.
-
Data centre provider Interxion has announced a partnership with euNetworks, which operates a European fibre optic network which should eventually reduce latency across Europe.
-
Interxion announced in January an agreement with Italian brokerage and trading firm Nuovi Investimenti to colocate its trading platform at Interxion’s City of London data centre.
-
Jaypee International has been approved as a Category Five member of the London Metal Exchange, the bokerage announced on February 4.
-
The Korea Exchange (KRX) has started to use Fidessa’s PowerBase NFS program. The NFS gateway provides high-speed market access for high-frequency and algorithmic traders. Fidessa claims that it reduces order processing time by 98% and increases throughput by 200%.
-
The London Metal Exchange (LME) is looking for a new chairman after Donald Brydon handed in his notice in early February.
-
The London Metal Exchange will open LME Asia, its first overseas office, in Singapore in April. The office will be headed by its commercial director Liz Milan.
-
Kevin Milne has been appointed director of post-trade services at the London Stock Exchange Group.
-
Cathryn Lyall has become director of BM&F Bovespa UK. Lyall will oversee the expansion of the London office, which will be its European hub. Before, she worked as an adviser for the exchange.
-
Morgan Stanley has hired Alvise Munari as head of equity derivatives sales and financial engineering. He was previously head of multi-asset structured product and flow equity derivatives sales for Bank of America Merrill Lynch within the EMEA region.
-
N2eX, the power exchange venture run by Nasdaq OMX and Nord Pool, will launch futures “within six months”, according to Geir Reigstad, president of Nasdaq OMX Commodities.
-
The Integrated Nano-Science and Commodity Exchange (INSCX), has appointed former senior Nasdaq developer Frank Racaneillo as honorary chairman and co-ordinator of US operations.
-
The Kansas City Board of Trade (KCBT) has announced that Richard Mandl had been elected chairman of the board for 2010. He replaces James Neville.
-
Mega Bolsa, the equity trading platform of Brazil’s BM&F Bovespa exchange, will use a new communication interface from April 20 for all its automatic direct market access connections.
-
Nasdaq OMX Nordic, the group of stock exchanges in the Scandinavian and Baltic region, has switched to Inet, a trading system already used widely in the Nasdaq OMX group.
The change should reduce trading times to 250 microseconds.
-
The UK arm of French brokerage Newedge has joined US power market Nodal Exchange, via its membership of LCH. Clearnet, Nodal Exchange was launched on April 8 last year, becoming the first exchange to offer locational futures contracts and related services to the US power market, with LCH.Clearnet as its central counterparty clearing house. Newedge becomes the seventh general clearing member to support trading on the exchange.
-
Orc’s offer of Skr19.625 ($2.70) per share in Neonet has been agreed by both boards in a merger which will create a global technology and financial trading services giant. Orc’s board claims the merger will create synergies from the sharing of technological expertise and annual cost savings of Skr130m.
-
Francis Lim, chief executive officer and president of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) stepped down on February 15 — two months earlier than scheduled.
-
Antoine Shagoury has been appointed chief information officer at the London Stock Exchange — a new position, reporting to Xavier Rolet, the chief executive.
-
Raymond Tamayo became chief information officer at the Options Clearing Corporation at the end of January. He replaces John Von Stein, who left the company in June 2009.
-
Following the launch of Arrowhead in January the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has set up an office to “promote and improve” co-location services. This builds on the exchange’s efforts to develop co-location which started in May 2009.
-
Two senior US Securities and Exchange Commission staff — Daniel Gallagher and Frederic Firestone — have left to join private law firms.
-
The CFTC, which oversees most US futures and options, could receive an extra $93m, or 55% of its present annual budget of $168.8m, which would bring its total funding to $261m. The SEC, which regulates all derivatives linked to securities, could be given a budget of $1.13bn in 2011.
-
Neal Wolkoff, chief executive of ELX Futures, has written to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission asking it to force CME Group to accept US Treasury futures trades opened at ELX.
-
Borse Dubai has taken up an option agreed with creditor banks a year ago and has been granted a one year extension on a $2.5bn syndicated loan, the state run holding company announced on January 21.
-
CME Group has agreed a seven year licensing deal with the Chicago Board Options Exchange, under which CBOE will create new volatility indices for commodities traded at CME.
-
David Hobbs has been appointed as chairman of the FTSE Policy Group. The group advises FTSE Group on strategic index and investment-related issues, and reviews the management of all FTSE indices.
Hobbs has been a director of the FTSE Group since July 2006. Before, he worked at UBS.
-
London-based interdealer broker Icap has expanded its base metals business by hiring Paul Phillips. He joins from French bank Natixis. Before that he worked for LME broker Amalgamated Metals Trading.
Icap became a Category Two member of the London Metal Exchange in January 2009, offering broking in futures, forwards and options on all LME metals.
-
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has proposed that futures and options brokerages would have to ensure that retail customers have sufficient understanding of derivatives before they can execute transactions.