Oversight of third-party vendors will soon take on a new human rights twist for many local and foreign financial firms doing business in the European Union thanks to the new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. The European legislation, otherwise called CS3D, forces firms to impose a moral code of conduct on their direct and indirect […]
BNY Hit With Final US$11M Fine For SS&C Contract Breach
SS&C Technologies Canada Corp. has won only US$11 million instead of the US$890 million it wanted, but it still scored a final moral victory against Bank of New York Mellon for violating the terms of its market data contract with the financial technology giant. The Ontario Court of Appeal let stand a lower trial court’s […]
SS&C: $890M At Stake in Legal Tussle With BNY Mellon
A longstanding dispute over a market data contract with SS&C Technologies, which could cost BNY Mellon up to a whopping US$890 million in damages, highlights the danger of intentionally violating or even misinterpreting a critical element of such an agreement– distribution rights. At issue is whether BNY Mellon had the right to distribute market data […]
SEC’s Proposed New Custody Rule Fails Industry Litmus Test
Fund management and custodian operations and legal experts are warning the US Securities and Exchange Commission that its proposed changes to its custody rule, which requires registered investment advisers to select a qualified custodian to safeguard their assets, are far too impractical and costly. “The new proposed rule is contrary to existing business practice and […]
T+1: Fund Managers Tackle Pain Points
Operations directors at fund management firms are starting to review post-trade communications, securities lending, liquidity management, and corporate actions as the critical processes keeping them awake at night when preparing for a one-day settlement cycle (T+1) for US securities in May 2024. Analyzing internal workflow and interactions with broker-dealers and custodian banks is essential to […]
Industry Squeezes SEC on Sec Loan Reporting
Wall Street continues to turn up the heat against the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposal for transaction reporting on securities loans, citing its contradictory analysis on short position and short activity reporting as well as potential operational shortcomings. The SEC recently reopened the comment period for its proposed securities loan reporting plan to adopt […]
US SEC Loan Reporting: Ops Cost of Transparency
The operational and legal challenges of complying with the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s potential requirement to report information on securities loan transactions to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority could outweigh the benefits of transparency to investors, say operations and legal experts. Instead of offering any feedback to the SEC’s proposal, some industry players asked […]
Securities Class Action Settlements: Don’t Leave Money on the Table
Recovering monies from class action settlements should be a risk-free revenue generator, but that’s not the case for many money managers, broker-dealers and their custodians. Instead, the process is fraught with operational errors, which results in billions of dollars in uncollected compensation each year. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only changed the types of securities […]
COVID 19: Custody Network Management Revisited
If fund managers can outsource middle and back-office operations and even trading desks, why can’t global custodians outsource network management due diligence and monitoring? That’s the question over a dozen former global custody network managers who spoke with FinOps Report over the past month are asking as concerns mount that the COVID-19 pandemic could eventually […]
State Street’s US$88M Fine Highlights Deceptive “Pass-Along” Custody Fees
How can a global custodian bank convince clients for almost two decades that a twenty-five cent cost to transmit a message through the SWIFT network transmission is really worth a $5 “pass-along” fee? Easily, when fund managers aren’t paying attention and no one at the custodian bank is minding the shop. That’s no longer the […]