If we make money for them, investors will be beating down our doors. That conventional wisdom for fund managers is starting to look a little bit stodgy and a lot less wise. Welcome to the new new world of investor relations for institutional and alternative fund markets. The standard of communication considered de rigueur for public firms, vulnerable to […]
Securities Finance Data Analysis: A Wing and a Prayer?
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, or make that what regulators weave! If the Financial Stability Board (FSB) has its way, back-office operations executives at fund managers, custodians and broker-dealers will be working overtime to track down hoards of data on securities lending and repurchase agreements with no certainty it will be of any […]
FATCA: Cost-Overruns Come With the Territory
Red might be a festive color for the approaching holiday season, except for the red ink many fund management shops are facing in cost overruns complying with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), foisted by the US Internal Revenue Services on financial institutions around the world. With the end-of-year deadline for arranging new budgets coming up fast, it […]
Shareholder Ballots: The Quest to Confirm a Vote
An investor receives information about a corporate agenda and casts its votes. It happens every day of the week and most frequently from February through June when most US firms hold their annual meetings. But just because a shareholder votes, doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any way to verify the vote made its way to the issuer, […]
Russia: Behind-the-Scenes Progress on Operational Risk
US and European sanctions aside, the Russian securities depository and regulators are staying on track toward their goal of turning Moscow into a major financial center through two badly needed operational reforms — the automated processing of corporate actions and electronic proxy votes for annual meetings in Russian corporations. In line with the global trend toward using ISO-compliant messages for […]
FINRA: New CARDS Does Little to Ease Data Collection Concerns
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) may think that putting new CARDS on the table will help clearing and introducing brokers comply, but they are still not too happy about the hand they’ve been dealt. Granted, in its new version of the so-called CARDS initiative, FINRA has bowed to industry demands with some changes to its initial […]
Regulatory Reporting: It’s All About the Process
As the regulatory reporting mandates keeping coming, there is no question fund management shops are feeling overwhelmed. But they are also realizing that offloading the management of the tsunami of reporting tasks onto third-party service providers isn’t working out as well as they expected. Both sides are on a steep learning curve in handling the mission-critical function and fund managers are learning the […]
T+2 in Europe: Smooth Sailing or Turbulence Ahead?
A non-event. That is how European securities depositories; their bank and brokerage participants, fund managers and software vendors describe the migration of over two dozen European markets to a two-day settlement cycle on October 8. Yet they are all realizing that they must keep up the good work in ensuring seamless middle office procedures. Relying […]
US SEC: Will It Finally Address CUSIP Fees?
After years of complaining about the fees they are paying for the issuance and use of CUSIP codes, issuers of fixed-income securities and the financial firms which use the securities identifiers may finally have found a friend at the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The US regulatory agency isn’t investigating CUSIP Global Services’ licensing fees […]
EU Settlements: More Corporate Actions Claims?
In focusing strictly on settling domestic and cross-border trades, the new central settlement platform, Target2Securities (T2S) may end up causing unintended operational glitches and additional costs when it comes to how corporate actions of European issuers are processed. Or so fear some managers who apparently aren’t buying the assertions made by custodians and securities depositories […]