With regulators on both sides of the Atlantic wanting bespoke swaps trades to fall under new margin guidelines, fund managers can ill-afford to sit idly by and rely simply on the negotiating skills of their legal advisors to come up with the best terms possible. Buy-side firms will need bring the so-called uncleared swap transactions […]
Fund Managers: Picking the Best Clearinghouse, Intricate Juggling Act
Fund managers can no longer afford to view clearinghouses as stodgy infrastructures which just exist for the sake of servicing mega broker-dealers and banks. With regulators now requiring far more transactions — particularly in the over-the-counter derivatives market — to be processed through clearinghouses, asset managers must realize they have some choices to make and […]
Collateral Management: Is Access Really King?
When it comes to managing collateral, fund managers can just forget about all the doomsday talk of a shortfall. There is enough to go around — and to fulfill a multitude of regulatory requirements — if only it could be easier to access it. Or so says a new study supported by the US Depository […]
EMIR: Gaining Control of Old Errors and New Requirements
EMIR, it’s short for European Market Infrastructure Regulation. It has also become a four-letter word for fund managers struggling to fulfill reporting requirements. About five months after the effective date for fund managers and broker dealers to send details of trades executed on exchange-listed and over-the-counter swap transactions to recognized trade repositories, fund managers are bemoaning the number […]
Collateral Management: Shifting from Cost to Profit Center
Once considered a dreary administrative task, collateral management is moving to high visibility for fund management shops, forced by new regulations to rethink their the use of the assets that back numerous transactions. Now a target for cost control with the ultimate goal of wringing revenue out of it, collateral management is coming out of the back room. “Depending on the types of […]
Custodians Whammied by New US Leverage Ratios
US regulators may be well-intentioned in mandating that eight systemically important banks maintain higher supplementary leverage ratios (SLRs) than their European peers, but for some of the world’s largest custodians their decision could spell higher costs of doing business — and a trickle down effect on fund management clients. With the new SLR requirements not taking effect […]
Fund Managers Tell Off US FINRA on TBA Margin Rules
Fund managers are up in arms about new rules proposed by the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) requiring the collateralization of many US-forward- settling agency mortgage-backed securities transactions, or those of similar asset classes, and their potential quick liquidation trades in a worse case scenario. While FINRA has direct oversight only over US broker-dealers, […]
New Swaps Clearing Rules Trigger Services Shakedown
Brave new ideas, especially when they are mandated by regulators, typically trigger a messy shakedown of systems and services — out with the old, in with the new with a lot of cost and waste lying by the roadside for others to benefit. Such is the case with the multi-faceted regulatory drive to squeeze potential systemic risk out […]
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 […]
FINRA: Even Tougher Margining Rules
US broker-dealers and their fund manager customers that deal in forward-settling agency mortgage-backed securities or similar asset classes better prepare for even more legal and operational stress. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has just come up a set of far more rigid and comprehensive rules than guidelines from a committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, […]