Latest News
After a dramatic decline in May the stock markets fell back strongly again in June, according to data from the Edhec-Risk Institute.
The S&P 500 index fell sharply by 5.23 per cent to its level of October 2009 and implied volatility rose for the fourth consecutive month, by 32.07 per cent, reaching its level of April 2009.
Even though there was still much ground to make up to recover from last month’s spectacular blow, the commodities market managed a significant positive return of 1.43 per cent.
The fixed income market covered mixed ground, with regular bonds exhibiting noticeable profits of
LaCrosse Global Fund Services has agreed to acquire the global alternative fund administration business of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, subject to regulatory approval.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Once the acquisition is complete, LaCrosse will have more than USD21bn in assets under administration and more than 250 employees.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch continues to provide a range of other services to hedge fund clients, including prime brokerage, custody, trust, escrow, cash management and agency services.
“Our company offers the most complete set of administration, operations and middle-office services in the industry,” says Stuart Feffer, LaCrosse Global
GCP Infrastructure Investments has raised GBP40m at a price of GBP1.00 per ordinary share through the placing, the offer for subscription and the arrangements for switching.
The company has applied for admission of 40,000,000 ordinary shares to trading on the Official List and to trading on the London Stock Exchange’s main market for listed securities, which is expected to take place on 22 July 2010.
Oriel Securities is acting as financial adviser, sponsor and bookrunner.
Stephen Ellis, managing partner of Gravis Capital Partners, says: "In spite of difficult market conditions, the quality of our concept (the targeted provision of debt
Investment Technology Group, an agency broker and financial technology firm, has launched its range of European algorithms across three new geographies: Israel, Hungary and Poland.
ITG now offers its suite of algorithms across 21 European markets.
The new markets have been added in response to demand from clients with equity flow into Israel, Hungary and Poland who are developing sophisticated automated trading strategies and searching for trading opportunities.
This development coincides with MSCI Barra’s announcement that Israel will be re-classified out of its emerging market indices and included in the widely followed MSCI World and MSCI EAFE indices, which took
Emerging markets specialist Finisterre Capital is expanding its research division with the appointment of Toby Triebel as credit analyst.
Prior to joining Finisterre, Triebel worked within the corporate turnaround and restructuring team at Alix Partners in London.
Triebel started his career in 2005 at Goldman Sachs, where he worked as an analyst on the industrials and natural resources team as part of the investment banking division.
In 2007 he moved to the FICC derivatives and debt capital markets team where he was later promoted to associate and ranked in the top tier of analysts. He was responsible for preparing and
Hedgebay, a secondary hedge fund market provider, has appointed Lindsey Clavel as directeur, a role which will see her lead the firm’s UK marketing drive.
Prior to joining Hedgebay in 2005, Clavel spent ten years running the metals trading desk of an Italian industrialist’s family office.
Following her graduation from the London School of Economics, Clavel joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and served for a number of years in the Middle East.
In addition to overseeing and expanding Hedgebay’s user base in the UK, Clavel will continue to manage her existing portfolio of clients around Europe. She will
Fidessa group, provider of trading, compliance, market data and connectivity solutions for the buy-side and sell-side, has appointed Robert Thompson president of its North American buy-side operations, encompassing the LatentZero front office suite.
Thompson will now act across the Fidessa group in the Americas, where he has been chief operating officer of its sell-side operations for the last 14 years.
Thompson says: “I look forward to bringing my industry expertise to our buy-side business to help drive growth and development in that area, particularly as we continue our investment in the LatentZero product suite. The combination of Fidessa’s buy-side and
A record number of over-the-counter interest rate swap trades were cleared in Q2 2010 by LCH.Clearnet’s IRS clearing service SwapClear.
The total number of trades for the quarter reached 191,694 trade sides, a 30 per cent increase on Q2 2009, driven by record volumes in May of 73,440 trade sides.
The increased figures bring the total outstanding amount of IRS transactions to USD224.6trn.
Established over ten years ago, SwapClear’s membership has increased to 32 direct members and the product scope has grown to cover the world’s 14 largest currencies with tenors up to 50 years in USD, EUR and GBP.
Swift plans to acquire the assets of SunGard’s Ambit Messaging Hub solution for high-volume financial messaging.
The transaction is subject to a number of closing conditions that are expected to be fulfilled by the end of the quarter.
SunGard’s AvantGard Ecosystem Communication Hub (Echos) for corporate-to-bank messaging is based on the AMH technology.
The transaction, the terms of which were not disclosed, is not expected to have a material impact on SunGard’s results.
The acquisition extends Swift’s connectivity portfolio. Ambit Messaging Hub is a modular, multi-network, high-volume financial messaging solution that can be tailored to an individual customer’s needs
The Dutch environmental exchange Climex and its clearer APX-Endex have won a tender issued by the Dutch Ministries of Housing, Spatial planning and the Environment and Economic Affairs to auction four million emission allowances over two auctions.
Climex and APX-Endex have been selected to execute these auctions.
Climex still has to wait for the written confirmation before it starts the preparations of the auction.
“We are extremely happy that Climex has been selected as the best suited exchange for the auctions,” says Sascha Bloemhoff, director of Climex. “Climex has always maintained accessibility for the compliance industry itself, with free membership,
