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July
US non-profit organisation the Conference Board has issued guidance to corporate directors on how to prevent shareholders accumulating undisclosed stakes in companies using cash-settled derivatives.
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The enlarged role for clearing houses likely to be included in planned EU legislation on derivatives could lead to conflicts of interest, two London trade associations have warned the European Commission.
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The US Senate opened a new chapter in financial markets history yesterday afternoon by passing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by 60 votes to 39.
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The US Senate yesterday morning voted through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by 60 votes to 38, allowing it to defeat a Republican filibuster.
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ICAP, the world’s largest inter-dealer broker, has enjoyed an 8% year on year rise in revenues during its second quarter. From April 1 2010 to June 30, the group’s profit grew by 5%.
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The UK Financial Services Authority has fined and banned PVM Oil Futures’ rogue trader Steve Perkins, nearly a year to the day after his late night alcohol-fuelled trading caused a brief spike in the price of Brent crude oil.
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June
DAS Trader – which its maker claims is the fastest software for the US stockmarket – has released new trading apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPad. But as Tom Osborn discovers, it faces a crowded field of competitors.
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Qbasis Invest, the Liechtenstein-based managed futures specialist, is expanding its London marketing operation by appointing Alistair Evans as director of sales, UK – its first salesperson in the country.
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Controls intended to prevent client money backing derivatives trades from being mixed with banks’ own funds are woefully inadequate, says Giles Nelson, deputy CTO at US-based operational software vendor Progress.
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Why haven’t more investment firms sued Wall Street banks for selling them trashy bonds? Could it be, asks Philip McBride Johnson, because they are scared their own ineptitude will come to light?
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May
Commodity trading advisors outperformed spectacularly in the traumatic markets of 2008, but were wrongfooted by the rebound in 2009. Have they emerged from the crisis with their appeal enhanced? Elise Coroneos reports.
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Paul Volcker, the veteran US central banker, is confident that the ‘Volcker Rule’ forbidding commercial banks from proprietary trading will be passed into law in the US.
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Goldman Sachs Futures has joined Singapore Exchange’s securities market as a trading and clearing member, the US investment bank announced on March 22. It is already a member of its derivatives segment. The addition brings the total number of SGX securities trading members to 25.
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Sucden Financial will bring multi-asset trading facilities to its institutional and corporate clients through a new system called Storm, which enables users to have direct market access to a range of cash equity and derivatives exchanges and platforms. The system uses SunGard’s technology.
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Proprietary trading carries its own risks and rewards. But do the risks – and returns – look different from 31 floors up Dubai’s Jumeirah Lake Towers? Tom Osborn meets the Dubai trading arcade, DPTG.
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April
Several leading Wall Street firms have written to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, urging it not to go ahead with plans to set position limits for speculative energy futures trading.
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BlueBay Asset Management, the London-based hedge fund, has deployed SuperDerivatives’ multi-asset portfolio management system, so that it can manage its derivatives business as well as other classes of assets.
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Cetip, the newly privatised Brazilian depository for OTC and private securities and derivatives, has signed a non-binding commercial agreement with Clearstream, Deutsche Börse’s clearing house.
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Deutsche Bank has obtained an international Islamic banking licence from Malaysia’s central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia, which will allow it to offer Sharia-compliant derivatives in Asia in currencies other than ringgit.
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Jacques Aigrain will be the next non-executive chairman of LCH.Clearnet, the clearing house, starting on April 6.
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OptionsCity has appointed Patrick Kenny to its board of advisers, the US technology vendor said on February 22. In October Kenny left rival software company Patsystems, where he had been managing director of the Americas for nine years.
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Peter Wind, vice-chairman of Penson GHCO, the Chicago-based futures broker, left the company on February 26.
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RJ O’Brien, the US futures broker, has appointed base metals specialist Janet Mirasola as managing director of its metals team. She will be based in New York, leading the firm’s new strategic partnership with Sucden Financial, the London-based derivatives broker.
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Thomas Siegl will become chief risk officer at European Commodity Clearing on May 1. He will leave BHF-Bank in Frankfurt, where he is responsible for the central risk management division. ECC clears trades on the European Energy Exchange.
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Large companies moaning about having to post collateral against derivatives have forgotten the real value of hedging, argues Philip McBride Johnson.
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Futures and Options World invites market participants to choose the cleverest and most useful innovations of the past year.
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March
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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HSBC has joined the trading platform offered by FFastFill, the futures trading software provider.
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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.
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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.
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Data centre provider Interxion has announced a partnership with euNetworks, which operates a European fibre optic network which should eventually reduce latency across Europe.
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Jaypee International has been approved as a Category Five member of the London Metal Exchange, the bokerage announced on February 4.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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February
Knight Capital Group, the leading US equity broker, has continued its expansion into derivatives by hiring Adam Templeton and Ryan Sylvester from Newedge as co-heads of strategic options.
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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s long-awaited announcement on January 14 of a new policy on controlling energy speculation was greeted in the market with quiet relief and satisfaction.
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The Futures and Options Association formed a new advocacy body in January, the FOA European Industry Council, to lobby regulators and politicians.
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GFI Group, the interdealer broker, has set up a team in New York working on carbon and emissions trading. Known as the GFI Environmental Products Group, it will originate, commercialise and trade secondary market credits.
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RealTick’s cross-asset electronic trading platform has integrated the latest suite of global equity algorithms and futures execution capabilities from Deutsche Bank.
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Newedge, the derivatives and securities brokerage, has appointed Laurent Cunin as head of its Asia Pacific operations, based in Hong Kong.
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Gauging how many derivatives staff lost their jobs in the financial crisis and what effect that had on pay is not easy. Some segments of the market have remained bullish, however, as Hugo Cox discovers.
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Trading Technologies International and Mizuho Securities USA have agreed to expand their global relationship, so as to co-market TT’s high speed X_Trader platform.
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Interdealer broker Tullett Prebon has launched a new over-the-counter brokerage firm in Japan for equity derivatives.
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RJ O’Brien, the largest independent futures broker in the US, has won regulatory permission to launch its first subsidiary in Canada.