As over-the-counter derivatives emerge from the shadowed status of private bilateral contracts into the relative sunlight of clearinghouse operations and regulatory reporting, there is a war heating up about a brand new problem — how these deals will be identified. Stocks, bonds, exchange-traded derivatives and other financial instruments are all regularly assigned unique codes that […]
News to Use: New AML Technology and Bitcoins
AML Tech Upgrade: To avoid doing business with the wrong customers and counterparties, financial firms can now rely on a new generation of software applications that go beyond traditional rules-based screening to far more sophisticated data analysis, says a new research report from Celent. The costs of not complying with anti-money laundering rules can be […]
Custodians to EU Regulator: Ease Up on New Settlement Rules
Uniform standards for how European securities depositories handle trades that fail to settle on time might sound like good thing — particularly since more than 30 of their markets have moved to a two-day settlement cycle and the phased launch of the new centralized settlement platform, Target2-Securities, is around the corner. But that’s not how the world’s largest custodian […]
AIFMD Annex IV Reporting: Risk Scrutiny on Deadline
The Alternative Investment Fund Manager Directive Annex IV. The long phrase describes at least three hundred points of reference data and other risk metrics alternative fund managers must provide regulators if they want to grab a “passport” to market their funds across European borders. That passport allows them to operate by a single set of rules, rather than […]
UCITS V: Devil in the Compensation Details
UCITS V — the latest incarnation of the decades-old European legislation easing cross-border marketing of investment funds — has fund managers angry about what they see as far more rigid rules governing their bonuses. Just adopted by the European Parliament, the legislation not only massively reduces the short-term variable compensation of so-called “risk-taking” staff, but defers […]
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 […]
Europe’s AIFMD: Will US Fund Managers Bite or Should They?
The EU’s new Alternative Investment Managers Directive (AIFMD) is supposed to give alternative investment fund managers the same cachet as their traditional investment manager peers following UCITS. Or so, European regulators think. But the allure of AIFMD appears to have been lost on a critical sector of the alternative funds market. US fund managers aren’t […]