Have we sufficiently protected our proprietary source codes? That is the question chief compliance officers, general counsel, and technology directors at Wall Street powerhouses should know how to answer if they want to avoid the fate of Headlands Technologies LLC (HT) , a global quantitative trading firm in the midst of civil and criminal litigation involving […]
SEC’s Short Sale Reporting Rule Comes Up Short
Fund management firms, soon required to report their short sale positions with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, could end up scrambling at the last minute to make the necessary operational changes while praying the regulatory agency agrees with their interpretations of some of its unclear requirements. Buy-side firms appear to be hoping the SEC […]
US Treasuries Central Clearing: Fund Managers’ Juggling Act in 2024
US fund managers will be spending the new year preparing for the operational and legal challenges arising from central clearing of most secondary trades in Treasury cash and repurchase agreements now that the Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the phased move. The mandated switch to central clearing for many transactions in US Treasuries will […]
Europe’s CSDR: Fund Managers Monitor Settlement Fails
Operations managers at fund management firms are scrambling to improve how they monitor settlement fails and prevent penalties imposed by their custodian banks just around the corner as mandated under Europe’s Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR). A dozen European fund management firms,who spoke with FinOps Report on condition of anonymity, say they are spending more […]
S in ESG Stands for Supply Chain
Do you know how green your third-party service providers are? That’s the question risk and vendor procurement managers at fund management firms, banks and broker-dealers must soon answer correctly or face reputational and regulatory consequences, say legal and data experts in environmental, social and governance policies. The vendors can be anyone from a fund administrator, […]
Bloomberg’s FIGIs Win Nod From US Standards Body: Now What?
Bloomberg finally got its wish for FIGIs– acceptance of its securities ID codes as a standard– but whether that equates to popularity for trade and post-trade operations managers remains to be seen. Trade, middle, and back-office operations, and compliance managers at buy and sell-side firms can now be certain that Bloomberg’s financial instrument global identifiers […]
Europe’s SFDR: Shades of Green Cause Ops Headache
Non-green, light green and dark green. Investment, compliance, and legal managers at fund management shops who must classify their funds in one of those three categories under Europe’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) are finding the road to explaining how their investments are helping or harming the environment and society paved with good intentions but […]
Schwab’s $1.2 M Customer Account Transfer Mistake: Now What?
Whoops, it happened again. This time it was a software glitch that led brokerage Charles Schwab to erroneously transfer US$1.2 million from a former retail client’s account to the customer’s new brokerage account at Fidelity Brokerage Services which has left operations managers at rival brokerages scratching their heads and Schwab forced to go to court. […]
Rule 605 Reports: Next for Transparency Data Overhaul?
More transparency — the mantra which has taken hold regarding Rule 606 reports — needs to make its way to Rule 605 reports, say trade execution experts and buy-side representatives who are hoping the US Securities and Exchange Commission will take action this year. US broker-dealers which forward orders to trading venues or market makers […]
COVID-19 Spurs Banks, Brokers to Reclaim “Lost” Assets
The COVID-19 pandemic is prompting a shakeup in the mundane world of unclaimed property reporting operations and compliance. Instead of simply focusing only on escheating accounts of lost investors and customers to state coffers, US banks and broker-dealers are now trying to recover funds and accounts belonging to their institutions, say unclaimed property operations managers. […]