The UK financial services sector has asked new regulator the Financial Conduct Authority to do more to support competition, improve its communication with the industry and provide clearer and more predictable regulation, according to a the results of a survey published by the FCA today.
The Australian Securities Exchange has set out plans to offer client clearing of OTC derivatives before the end of the year, in a move designed to provide new risk management controls to Australian investors.
Banks can breathe a sigh of relief following the publication of amendments to US Dodd-Frank Rule 1073 today, which should allay fears that draconian regulation was about to stifle cross-border payments.
A difficult future for the banking industry, but a potentially great one for London as a financial centre, was predicted by Sir John Gieve, chairman of VocaLink and former deputy governor of the Bank of England, speaking at the opening of Swift’s Business Forum in London today. But the industry must be careful and diplomatic if it wants to have any real say in how the future is shaped.
Dermot Turing, partner at Clifford Chance, told the IPS conference that regulators are hampering innovation by making it hard for the industry to collaborate though application of competition law. He advocates that banks – particularly from the transaction and payments world – should be educating the regulators in order to get better regulations.
Standard Chartered has enlisted Clearstream and Euroclear to make more efficient use of collateral, as tough new financial regulations drive investor fears of an impending collateral shortfall.
Despite its negative public perception, high-frequency trading can act as a force for good in capital markets by adding efficiencies that help investors get a better deal – but only if it is properly regulated, according to new research by technology consultancy GreySpark Partners.
The absence of market surveillance tools in many jurisdictions and regions is “potentially one of the more significant problems facing the markets in light of technological developments, such as the rapid speed of trade execution and increase in order volume”, says the International Organization Of Securities Commissions in its final report on surveillance.
US post-trade services utility the DTCC has appointed Peter Tierney as regional head of Asia, as the company continues its drive to be a global centre for OTC derivatives reporting.
Brazilian exchange BM&F Bovespa has installed a new market surveillance system from Nasdaq OMX, which it says will help ensure the safety of all market participants on the Brazilian market.
Market operators have a duty to educate the public about stock markets – and to take widespread concerns about the role of high-frequency traders seriously, according to Christian Katz, chief executive at SIX Swiss Exchange.
Discontent with regulation cast a cloud over delegates on the first day of the TradeTech conference in London, as senior industry executives pondered on the politicisation of the debate and the perceived failure of regulators to deliver efficient markets.
Regulators in the UK are concerned that some European governments will force through regulations that will close off legitimate market practices such as algorithmic trading because they do not fully understand the markets, said a panellist at the TradeTech event in London. Tim Rowe, head of the trading platforms and settlement team at the UK’s […]
At first glance, the Basel Committee’s new Principles for stronger banking risk governance appear to represent another huge change management challenge for global institutions.
A session at Trade Tech in London fell into chaos earlier today, as furious delegates hurled accusations across the table and members of the audience sparred aggressively with panellists.
It’s not just the banks that are struggling with the costs of regulation – so are the regulators. In the US. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has requested a 52% budget hike to $315 million dollars – described by one of its own commissioners as “improbable and unsustainable”.
Bankers can seem a little bit schizophrenic when it comes to regulation – much of the time they complain about the sheer weight of the regulatory burden they face, but at other times they talk of regulation as an opportunity. It could well be that as they have finally realised regulation – and plenty of it – is inevitable, some banks have decided to make a virtue out of it.
Post-trade services company Traiana has opened its Swap Data Repository Service, Harmony TR Connect, for OTC derivatives – providing a tool for market participants to comply with US Dodd-Frank legislation on trade reporting.
As the February 2014 deadline for implementation of Single Euro Payment Area compatible instruments approaches, focus is moving from banks to corporates – and the increasingly clear picture is that few European corporates see any great benefit from adopting the standards involved.
A journalist, a politician and a banker walk into a bar … sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? Feel free to submit a punchline: personally, I’m starting to think that it would be a very sour joke. With banker-bashing now an established national pastime, the press having spectacularly fouled their own nest […]
At the beginning of March, George Osborne travelled to the English seaside town of Bournemouth to make a speech at the JP Morgan operations centre there. It wasn’t Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day speech, but it may well go down as a watershed moment in the history of the UK financial services sector. Osborne is […]
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Proposed policies intended to promote competion in payments could stifle innovation and standardisation in the payments and transaction banking sectors, according to a partner in a leading law firm. Dermot Turing, partner in the international financial institutions and markets group at Clifford Chance, told delegates at the International Payments Summit in London that moves by […]
Credit advisory and investment partnership Venn Partners has launched Venn Risk Analytics, a financial analysis platform that it says will provide an independent and transparent approach to the analysis and valuation of structure finance products.
Following the release of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Principles for Effective Risk Data Aggregation, middle and back office professionals in major financial centres now find themselves with a number of difficult questions, that senior management must be able to answer and evidence.
As tough new rules requiring the collateralisation of OTC derivatives take hold in Europe and the US, Citi has retooled its OpenInvestor investment services to include segregated collateral custody accounts – a move the bank says will help mitigate counterparty risk and improve collateral efficiency.
Anti-Money Laundering systems and controls continue to make news in the wake of the high profile failures of 2012. On 5 February, the proposal for the updated EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive was finally released. The proposal imposes a number of new requirements significantly increasing the scope and volume of firms’ KYC processes likely to be required by 2014.
As new rules for OTC derivatives take hold in Europe and in the US, banks and asset managers face a complex cocktail of mandatory clearing, reporting and increased collateral requirements.
Benchmark manipulation and fallout from it is not new news, but the global drive to regulate benchmarks is. Europe has made the first move to controlling benchmark manipulation but global co-ordination is needed to create an approach that works for everyone.
Nordic bank Alandsbanken has chosen risk management tools from SunGard, which it says will help the bank to comply with new financial regulations. SunGard’s Ambit Risk and Ambit Performance products will be used by the bank to manage interest rate and liquidity risk and help the bank keep track of its balance sheet.
Japan’s Mizuho International has adopted the common reporting, financial reporting and liquidity coverage ratio modules of Wolters Kluwer’s Basel III toolkit, which is designed to help banks cope as regulators tighten the screws on the banking sector’s capital requirements.
US derivatives giant CME Group and OTC trade processing service MarkitServ have connected to support clearing for OTC FX transactions, ahead of new regulations in the US and Europe on the central clearing of OTC contracts.
European payment processor Equens plans to offer a number of services to the Dutch business community to support them in the migration to Single Euro Payments Area formats
The JP Morgan Task Force Report into its Chief Investment Office’s $6 billion-plus loss found the bank’s Value at Risk was being calculated with an Excel spreadsheet that “required time-consuming manual inputs to entries and formulas, which increased the potential for errors”.
In future, the possibility of a bank failure will be accepted as a normal market process, and barriers to entry for new start-ups, including a removal of capital requirement obstacles, will be removed, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England have confirmed.
New rules and regulations for financial benchmarks following the Libor scandal will come into effect next Monday, says the Financial Services Authority, and will follow the recommendations of the Wheatley Review.
The shift to SEPA offers significant benefits to businesses – from lower bank fees on euro payments and direct debits to opportunities to streamline processes.
The European Central Bank says that the speed of adopion of direct debits in line with the Single Euro Payments Area standards is “unacceptable” and urged regulators and payment service providers to make greater efforts to push the instrument or risk damaging the reputation of the scheme.
Technology and information companies CGI and Experian have partnered to help Europe’s banks and corporates meet the requirements of SEPA, the Single Euro Payments Area, on direct debits.
Market data vendor Interactive Data has responded to the introduction of Financial Transaction Taxes in France and Italy with a new service that supports the identification of instruments that are likely to be subject to them.
