Asset managers and broker-dealers will have to revamp some of their relationship terms, as well as those with the underlying investors, to meet the pending margin requirements for to-be-announced (TBA) transactions and other forward-settling fixed-income transactions. Panelists and attendees at a recent afternoon conference held by the Securities Industry and Financial Market Association about the Financial Industry […]
Catching an Insider Data Thief
Ten percent of employees will never commit a crime, ten percent of employees will, while 80 percent will only do so if the opportunity arises, predict fraud experts. It is that opportunity which asset management firms need to prevent through a combination of compliance controls and technology, say panelists and attendees at a recent symposium […]
Asset Managers Attack Data Silos with Governance
Data governance isn’t just for megabanks anymore. Asset managers are gradually joining the crowd of believers, creating rulebooks for how data quality is ensured enterprisewide with business lines at the helm. That was the consensus of panelists and attendees at a TSAM North America fund management operations event last month where data management took center stage […]
Depository Reforms Russian Corporate Actions Risk
Sketchy information on annual meeting agendas or corporate actions announcements is not going to plague investors in Russia equities in the future. Nor will fund managers risk losing money as many do today, because the operational difficulties discourage them from participating. Russia’s corporate actions reform has given the country’s national securities depository National Settlement Depository (NSD) the […]
Transfer Agents, DTC Still Chilly On Issuer Freeze Policies (Updated)
(Editor’s note: On December 6, 2016 the SEC finally published its acceptance of DTC’s rule changes affecting how it will impose chills and locks on US corporate issuers. The agency’s decision marks the end of a contentious debate between DTC, issuers and their transfer agents. Still, reservations remain. “The vast majority of the new rules […]
Fund Operations Managers Weather UK’s Brexit Storm
While the UK and European Union leaders will have two years to come up with a gameplan for how the UK will separate from the European Union, middle and back-office operations professionals at fund management shops are taking it one day at a time during extreme market volatility. The UK’s legal limbo has caused higher trading […]
RIAs: Hail to the Chief Valuation Officer?
Chief valuation officers could become just as important as chief compliance officers for registered investment fund managers. They also might discover that, like chief compliance officers, the position may carry personal risk of bruising regulatory penalties. The emergence of this new C-class executive was predicted by panelists at a recent global fund valuation forum co-hosted in New […]
T. Rowe Price Investor Payback: The Unpushed Button
For fund managers, proxy voting isn’t a minor housekeeping matter. Depending on just how financially controversial the corporate agenda is, the vote can be as crucial to the health of investor portfolios as any trading decision. There is plenty of regulatory rulemaking to keep everyone’s eye on the ball so when something goes awry, it’s big […]
Bloomberg Takes on KYC Onboarding for Hedge Funds
With its new offering called Entity Exchange, Bloomberg is trying to take a bite out the market share — especially among hedge fund managers — of the existing utilities for automating know-your-customer requirements. Its strategy: give the buy side more control. Regulators require financial firms to know just who they are doing business with before they […]
Still Holes in New Tax Code for Equity Derivatives?
Foreign fund managers, prime brokers, broker-dealers and banks entering into US equity derivative transactions are facing a taxing operational challenge. Worse, at this point it isn’t entirely clear how it will work. After the US Congress passed enabling legislation in 2010 and the Internal Revenue Service floated several proposed versions of the rules to massive industry […]