With less than 100 days left before new Rule 4210 of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority becomes effective, broker-dealers aren’t the only ones that should be preparing for new margin requirements for to-be-announced (TBAs) transactions and other forward settling fixed-income trades. Even if indirectly, investment management firms will also be in the regulatory crosshairs. Time is […]
KYC: Beneficial Owner Rules Looming
In the last 11 weeks before the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s new rules on tracking beneficial ownership of customers take effect, financial firms need to decide how deeply they intend to dig into their customer’s shareholder base. And how they intend to do it, as the rules are not always explicit. As of May […]
SEC to Fund Admins: No Proof, No NAV
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has just warned fund administrators they can’t take the word of a fund manager when calculating the net asset value (NAV) of an investment fund. When explaining its recent US$561,000 fine against Gemini Fund Services, the US regulatory agency says that when assigning an NAV to a mutual fund, […]
Central Clearing for US Treasuries: Pipedream or Reality?
The have and have-nots. That is how operations and compliance executives at some fund management firms speak about the bifurcated system for how trades in US Treasuries clear. Fund managers tell FinOps Report they want a level playing field with broker-dealers. That means that buy-side trades in US Treasuries, such as bills, notes and bonds, […]
OTC ISINs: Few Users Pay Much More
Trading venues, banks, and broker-dealers now know for certain how much more they will have to pay to create International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs) for over-the-counter derivatives. It turns out that it’s a lot more. In a recent statement, the Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) said that instead of a €65,000 annual fee, power users will have […]
EU’s SRD: Reworking Proxy Services
Custodian bank operations managers should start planning to get their hands a lot dirtier in the proxy plumbing process. The new version of the European Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD) calls for them to respond to European issuer requests for identifying investors who hold more than 0.5 percent of a company’s stock, to forward proxy information […]
EquiLend, Prime Brokers Sued: Collusion or Fair Game?
Prime brokers harmed beneficial owners of securities by protecting their turf and sabotaging fledgling electronic securities lending platforms that could have helped buy-side firms earn more revenues from their loans. That is the claim of four US pension plans and one trading firm that have sued six mega US prime brokers and securities lending platform EquiLend […]
Can Blockchain Supercharge Syndicated Loans?
Editor’s Update (4/26/2018): Finastra announced on April 24 that its Fusion LenderComm platform was commercially available, as an app on R3s Corda platform. Agent banks in the syndicated loan market can publish lender-specific deal positions on the ledger eliminating the need for lenders to query their agent banks about transaction history by phone, fax or […]
Form N-PORT: Managers Report Big Stress
Update 12/12/2017: Fund managers shouldn’t feel too relieved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s delay on when they must submit Form N-PORT. On December 8, the SEC said that fund managers can wait until April 2019 at the earliest to transmit their completed Form N-PORT to the regulatory agency’s Edgar system. However, fund managers […]
IRS 871(m) Withholding Tax: No More Relief for the Weary?
On October 2 when the US Treasury published its announcement of eight regulations scheduled for repeal or replacement, tax operations, compliance and legal experts found a major disappointment. Despite repeated industry requests for repeal, or at least more clarity about some of its provisions, the controversial Internal Revenue Service Section 871(m) on withholding tax for US […]