Asset managers can start looking forward to an industry-standard way to communicate with sponsors and overlay management of unified managed accounts (UMAs). Resurrecting the hub concept announced with much fanfare by the DTCC in 2011 and quietly abandoned by the US infrastructure giant the next year, a replacement is in the works through a collaboration between the Money Management […]
Europe’s Consolidated Tape: Reality or Pipedream?
While the European Parliament has finally voted its support for the new version of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), one of its most controversial goals — establishing a central source of post-trade prices from regulated markets — is still far from fruition. The new MiFID mandate may include some stepping-stone dates, but the language of […]
Middle Office Takes Center Stage in T+2
Once the unsung sibling of the front and back office, the middle-office could finally get its long overdue recognition as the US prepares to shorten its trade settlement cycle from three days to two. Squeezed between traders praised for making lucrative deals and operations experts at the end of the line moving cash and securities around to meet settlement obligations, […]
SEC Attacks Systemic Risk Through Big Clearing Agencies
More collateral, more risk-related metrics and possibly higher fees for participants. That’s what banks, broker-dealers and even their fund manager customers might face should the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s new oversight rules for six large systemically important market infrastructures be implemented. Four years after the US adopted the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, the SEC has finally come up […]
UCITS V: Just When Are Depositaries Liable, or Not?
When operations executives, their relationship management colleagues, not to mention their compliance directors can’t agree on how to talk about a topic, it qualifies as organizational confusion. When it’s industry-wide, it’s a bona fide hot potato. That is the situation today as custodian banks in Europe, acting as depositaries for traditional investment funds, attempt to make sense of […]
US Fund Managers: Tackling Cybersecurity as Operational Risk
What do retail department stores and US asset managers have in common? The potential for cyberattacks, says the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has put fund managers on high alert to shore up any deficiencies in their data security technology and procedures. The securities watchdog says it will be reviewing the cybersecurity work of investment […]
Europe’s AIFMD: Will US Fund Managers Bite or Should They?
The EU’s new Alternative Investment Managers Directive (AIFMD) is supposed to give alternative investment fund managers the same cachet as their traditional investment manager peers following UCITS. Or so, European regulators think. But the allure of AIFMD appears to have been lost on a critical sector of the alternative funds market. US fund managers aren’t […]
Harmonizing European Depositories May Be a Bumpy Ride
In trying to harmonize the operations of European securities depositories, regulators may well be creating unintended operational and financial burdens for the settlement houses and their members in dealing with trades which fail to settle on time. “The shorter timetable for settlement and the fines for late settlement will be far more difficult to implement […]
Russia: Is the NSD Coming in from the Cold?
With Russia’s regulatory and settlement infrastructure on the mend, foreign fund managers appear to be slowly forgiving the market’s past indiscretions and giving Moscow its long-awaited international stature. Granted, Russia has a long way to go before it can match the likes of its more established peers across the globe. Settlement delays, stolen securities, uncertainty […]
What to Do When the CFTC Gets Into Your Phone Calls
A new requirement from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that all oral communications on some over-the-counter transactions be recorded, could end up being technologically and economically unfeasible. In its role as overseer of the burgeoning US$650 billion swaps market — a designation assigned by the US Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act — the CFTC […]