Gone are the days when the middle office is maligned as being strictly a cost-center dragging down investment performance. Today more fund managers are concluding that more effective management of their middle office can not only reduce operating expenses, but also give them a competitive edge with investors and keep regulators at bay. Fund management […]
Reporting Securities Finance Deals: More is Less?
Say what, say who, say when? That’s the reaction of fund managers, custodians and market infrastructures to the European Securities and Market Authority’s request for feedback on a new regulation requiring reporting information on securities finance transactions to trade repositories. Market players complain that ESMA’s technical specifications for complying with the Securities Finance Transaction Regulation […]
Fund Managers to SEC: Change DTCC, ICE Swaps Rules
Fund managers are asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to force Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and ICE to adapt their rulebooks to match their limited reporting responsibilities for security-based swap transactions. The Asset Management Group (AMG) and Investment Company Institute (ICI) say that the DTCC’s Trade Repository and the ICE Trade Vault have overstepped the […]
FATCA, GATCA Tax Patience of Relationship Managers
Relationship managers on the front-lines of interacting with investors or customers say that complying with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and its global version Common Reporting Standards (CRS) is giving them plenty of angst. The requirement to identify the investor or customer for tax purposes may conflict with the equally important need to […]
Panama Papers Fallout: Heavier KYC/AML Burden(Updated)
(Editor’s Note: After this article went to press, the US Treasury said it had adopted a rule requiring banks, broker-dealers, mutual funds, futures commission merchants and introducing brokers in commodities to collect and verify information on beneficial owners. The Treasury also sent to Congress legislation to approve requiring that companies formed in the US file […]
New SEC Reporting Forces Big Analytic Leap for Funds
Duration, options delta, gamma, vega. total monthly return and payoff profile. These are just a handful of the data points which mutual fund companies will be required to provide the US Securities and Exchange Commission if the regulatory agency finally adopts its new reporting rules for registered investment companies. For the SEC, the new data […]
Europe’s Revised Settlement Regime: Still Problematic?
latto nude venus3444 Just who is responsible for fixing a securities transaction which fails to settle on time? a. the securities depository b. the custodian of the injured counterparty c. the injured trading counterparty d. all of the above The European Securities and Markets Authority, the pan-European regulatory agency, recently decided that the answer should […]
Investment Fund Transfer Agents: Forget About Monitoring Brokers
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has the right intention in wanting to update its outdated rules for transfer agents, say investment funds transfer agents and their legal counsel, but its approach in regulating shareholder recordkeepers of buy-side firms may be flawed. Among the growing list of concerns is whether investment fund transfer agents might […]
Securities Finance Data: Useful or Not for European Regulators?
In asking market players to shed more light on their securities finance transactions, European regulators have unintentionally opened an operational and legal can of worms. The newly passed European Securities Financing Transactions (SFT) legislation includes a requirement that managers of new European traditional and alternative investment funds disclose their policies involving securities finance transactions in […]
KYC Onboarding: Taking a Global Centralized Approach
Name, rank and serial number. That’s what national military organizations across the globe use to identify their members. Too bad the same simplicity can’t be used by financial firms when it comes to identifying their customers and counterparties, bemoan operations and compliance specialists. Instead financial firms must deal with a hodgepodge of regulatory requirements across […]