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Convergex Group, a technology company, has appointed Sean Westley as a senior vice president of sales at NorthPoint Trading Partners, the firm’s boutique prime brokerage business.
In his new role, Westley is located in New York.
Westley brings over 12 years of relevant experience with him. Prior to joining Convergex, he worked in numerous prime brokerage capacities at UBS, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. Most recently he served as an executive director in UBS’s prime services division.
Doug Nelson, chief executive officer of NorthPoint Trading Partners, says: “We are thrilled to bring someone of Sean’s calibre on board to further
The Dubai International Financial Centre Authority has welcomed a series of regulatory changes to the DIFC’s collective investment funds regime.
The changes were made following recommendations made by a panel of market practitioners and implemented by the Dubai Financial Services Authority on 11 July 2010.
Dubai International Financial Centre-based fund managers are now permitted to establish and manage funds in jurisdictions of their choice.
Fund managers from recognised jurisdictions outside the Dubai International Financial Centre can establish and manage a domestic fund without having to establish a place of business in the DIFC.
The scope for marketing of foreign funds
More than USD7.7bn in catastrophe bonds has now been listed on the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange in the British Overseas Territory.
Cayman Finance chairman Anthony Travers says the latest figures emphasise the extraordinary growth in this particular sector since 2007 when the very first cat bond was listed in Cayman.
Catastrophe bonds bring a broad range of benefits to insurers and insureds by increasing the pool of funding and reducing insurance costs to end users.
Cayman has 74 series of catastrophe bonds listed with a value of EUR7.7bn while Bermuda has ten bonds listed with a value of USD1.1bn.
Travers
The Hennessee Group has analysed its Hennessee Hedge Fund Indices to determine which strategies have outperformed the S&P 500 Index during times of crisis, and which strategies generated attractive risk-adjusted returns while providing downside protection.
In its analysis, the Hennessee Group first isolated the worst five drawdown periods for the S&P 500 Index dating back to 1993 and used the three main Hennessee Hedge Fund Sub-Indices as proxies to identify which hedge fund strategies have historically protected capital the best during strong market sell-offs.
While all hedge funds strategies provide significant downside protection, analysis shows that non-directional strategies, such as
Alvarium Capital has selected the Deltix QuantOffice and QuantServer product suite for the development and production deployment of advanced quantitative strategies.
Deltix offers a one-stop software platform for quantitative traders and portfolio managers to create, test, optimise and deploy in production alpha generation and execution strategies.
Jonathan Calvert is the president of Alvarium Capital, a hedge fund startup developing multi-horizon quantitative strategies. Calvert has used a wide variety of quantitative tools, both commercial and proprietary, over his 18 year career as a partner at GMO and portfolio manager at RiverSource Investments and Mellon Capital Management.
"The Deltix product suite provides
David Tovar has joined Skyline Capital Management as head of research.
Tovar was previously an analyst at Merrill Lynch.
Skyline Capital Management is a long/short equity specialist with significant emerging markets exposure, which plans to launch with USD50 to USD100m assets under management in November.
It was co-founded by chief investment officer Geoff Bamber, previously a senior analyst at Nevsky Capital, and chief executive Vernon West, previously head of the public sector client business at Barclays.
Derivatives exchange Eurex has for the first time exceeded the one million mark in open interest on its dividend product suite.
Dividend futures and options contracts outstanding as at 19 July stood at 1,010,417 which represent a nominal value in excess of EUR6.2bn of the dividend payments of European blue-chip companies.
Dividend based derivatives are a relatively new asset class and Eurex was the first exchange to launch equity index dividends in summer 2008.
Open interest of the dividend index derivatives stands above 636,000 contracts.
Dividend contracts on single stocks were introduced in January 2010 and they have already amassed
NYSE Technologies, the commercial technology unit of NYSE Euronext, has launched Order Routing Direct, a fully-managed point-to-point order routing service.
Order Routing Direct uses patent-pending network technology that allows customers to connect directly via FIX protocol with their trading counterparties and does not require routing back to a centralised hub.
“Order Routing Direct provides our customers with fully-managed connectivity, broad FIX compatibility and revolutionary network technology to directly connect to any of the more than 650 broker dealers and 600 buy-side firms in the NYSE Technologies Marketplace community,” says Scott Fitzpatrick, vice president, NYSE Technologies Marketplace. “We recognise that some
SS&C Technologies, a provider of financial services software and software-enabled services, has launched Risk Analytics, an independent investment risk analysis solution for hedge funds, fund of funds, private equity funds and managed accounts.
The new risk management tools, fully integrated with SS&C’s proprietary accounting and derivatives platform, provide SS&C’s clients daily and monthly risk reporting as part of SS&C’s middle and back office fund administration services.
Risk Analytics is also available as an in-house solution.
"Fund managers and administrators continue to be challenged to manage risk, reduce costs and grow with transparency and control," says Bill Stone, chairman and chief
Investors continued to allocate new capital to hedge funds in the second quarter of 2010 with the industry experiencing a net inflow of USD9.5bn, according to figures released by Hedge Fund Research.
Volatility returned to global capital markets in 2Q10 with the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index posting a decline of 2.5 percent, offsetting 1Q10 gains.
Total hedge fund industry capital ended the most recent quarter at USD1.65trn, down from USD1.67trn the prior quarter.
Following strong performance in 2009, hedge funds declined by 0.21 percent in the first half of 2010, as gains in credit sensitive strategies such as arbitrage
