Failing to settle or even match the details of European securities trades on time could become a lot more expensive and reputationally risky for banks, broker-dealers, and their fund manager customers, if European regulators have their way. Just how much more they will have to spend beyond the hefty internal administrative costs, and current fines […]
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 […]
ISO 20022 for Corporate Actions: A for Effort; C for Completion in US? (Update)
Where SWIFT goes, Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. follows. Not a phrase heard very often, if ever. However, when it comes to moving the US financial industry to ISO 20022 messaging for corporate actions, DTCC appears to have relaxed some of its demands. Nearly a decade ago, SWIFT pressed the financial community hard to convert from […]
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 […]
Latin America’s MILA: Solving Settlement Quagmire
Mercado Integrado Latinoamericano, or MILA, sounded like a great idea. Announced in September 2009 and launched in May 2011, the initiative was supposed to bolster trading volumes in three stock markets, which historically languished in the shadows of Brazil and Mexico. The exchanges of Colombia, Chile and Peru would become the new Euronext. Or so […]
EMIR: One Little Number Can Make or Break Reporting
With the European regulatory requirements for reporting exchange-traded and over-the-counter swap transactions less than a month away, fund managers can’t afford a leap of faith that they will be ready, warn regulatory and operations experts. There is a key nagging issue they must resolve before February 12: just who will create the 52-character unique trade […]
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 […]