Industry news


Date: Sep 25, 2013

September 25, 2013: JPMorgan eyes $4bn ‘pay for peace’ deal; LME Halts Electronic Trading Due to Technical Issues; ICAP ordered to pay $87 million fine in Libor rigging settlement

JPMorgan, hit on all sides by allegations of wrongdoing, floats the idea of paying a very large fine in order to be absolved of all sins, all at once. The London Metal Exchange shuts off trading for a period yesterday, but in a break from the currently-fashionable practice of crashing due to computer failure, the LME accomplishes the feat by combining technology with human error. Judgment Day Number One arrives for brokerage ICAP with regard to the LIBOR scandal, with fines for the company and criminal charges against former employees.

First Read

Chicago upstart takes on Vix ‘fear gauge’
Tracy Alloway in New York – FT.com
For two decades, the Vix index run by the Chicago Board Options Exchange has been the financial industry’s go-to method for measuring expectations of volatility in the wider marketplace. Now NationsShares, a small index provider based just across the street from the CBOE’s Chicago headquarters, is about to launch what it says is a newer and better way to measure volatility in the market. In doing so, it will take on one of the most entrenched indices on Wall Street – and the CBOE itself.
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***JM: Wonder if that makes the folks at CBOE fearful. …look, somebody had to say it, ok?

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Questions Swirl About High-Speed Trading and Last Week’s Fed Announcement
Steven Russolillo – MoneyBeat – WSJ
As if the Federal Reserve’s no-taper decision wasn’t complicated enough, speculation that some traders may’ve gotten word of the decision earlier than they were supposed to is gaining traction.
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***** Before pointing the finger at the algos, it is important to remember they often trade not on the news per se, but on the price information hitting the market. The trick is to find the source.

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U.S. SEC sets zero-tolerance objective for glitches at exchanges
Reuters
Technical glitches and other operational errors at U.S. exchanges cannot be tolerated, given the high-speed, interconnected nature of the markets, the head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday.
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***JM: “Zero tolerance” is nowhere near the same as “zero occurrence” with regard to software defects. One is almost impossible, and one makes the pig look pretty.

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NYSE CEO Calls for More Shared Services Among Finance Companies
Steve Rosenbush – The CIO Report – WSJ
Financial institutions should upgrade their outdated technology systems and share the new infrastructure, NYSE Euronext Inc. CEO Duncan Niederaurer said on Monday.
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***JM: Will we also be sharing fines when the infrastructure fails?

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A Brighter Outlook For Stock Exchanges?
Jeffrey Kutler – Institutional Investor
Securities markets go in cycles. For stock investors, this has been an up year. At the same time, the business of operating the markets on which securities trade goes through cycles of its own, and the current one isn’t looking so good.
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***DA: More emerging players fighting over declining volume. Gee, where do I sign up?

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HEDGE FUNDS – Place your advertisement HERE
Tracy Alloway | FT Alphaville
And enjoy sub-par returns for the next 12 months. No, this is not FT Alphaville’s marketing department shooting itself in the foot. This is the conclusion of a recent paper examining the effect of advertising on hedge funds’ inflows and returns.
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***JM: I expect that hedge fund advertising will be just as predictive as that in other sectors, such as used cars.

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No Escape From Jail or Fines in Global Market-Abuse Clampdown
Bloomberg
Crooked bankers and insider traders would have no safe havens under planned global guidelines for market-abuse penalties, amid concerns some countries don’t have strict enough rules.
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***DA: We’re starting to at least require an admission of guilt as a part of settlements. That’s a good start.

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CFTC Orders Vision Financial Markets LLC to Pay a $140,000 Civil Monetary Penalty for Failing to Diligently Supervise its Employees
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today issued an Order filing and simultaneously settling charges against Vision Financial Markets LLC, a CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, for failing to diligently supervise by failing to aggregate a customer’s multiple accounts, failing to use the proper delta, and utilizing a faulty software program in calculating the customer’s net position.
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***DA: I may have had some sympathy for Vision if they had corrected the problem sooner than six months after discovering the error.

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Orc News, September 2013
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Orc newsletter. We’ve had an exciting quarter with many developments including the launch of our Professional Services offering, enhancements to our trading performance and the announcement of a new Chief Operating Officer. Please scroll down for more information on all of these topics as well as new webinars and events in which you can find us!
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LinkUp Brings Efficiency to Networking Events
By: Jessica Titlebaum
Has networking become too big for its own good?

People attend networking events to make new connections, explore business synergies and identify unique opportunities. However, without knowing who is in attendance, it may prove difficult for some to navigate the networking landscape.

“It’s easy to get lost in the crowd,” said Iqbal Brainch, chief marketing officer at Advantage Futures. “I would go to events and end up talking to the people I already knew.”

Hearing that this was a common theme among his colleagues, Brainch launched LinkUp (joinlinkup.com); an application that better equips attendees with the information needed to make face to face connections. Leveraging the LinkedIn community, on an opt-in basis, LinkUp allows users to see who will be in attendance and how to connect with them directly within the application.
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***JK: A nicely timed app from within our industry, with FIA Expo right around the corner.

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Notes from the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit
Joshua M Brown | The Reformed Broker
I’m live from the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit at the New York Historical society’s gorgeous headquarters on Central Park West. Bloomberg has brought together fifty of the most important, market-moving people on earth for today’s event and I’m taking notes during each of the panels and presentations. Below are my notes from this morning’s seven segments. Like a jazz musician, my composition below will be free-flowing and improvisational, where you see quotation marks around something it is a direct quote – otherwise I’m paraphrasing as best I can. Enjoy!:
Morning Session: jlne.ws/181HBq6
Afternoon Session: jlne.ws/16q11b8

***DA: How can you call it the 50 most influential people yet not include Miley Cyrus?

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Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management Announces 2013 University Tour Dates
From mid-October to the end of November 2013, Anton Kreil, Managing Partner of the Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management will tour 15 Universities of the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, providing seminars to students on how best to approach the career landscape in the current Trading, Portfolio Management and Banking Industries.
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MarketsWiki

MarketsWiki Page of the Day
Mark Ibbotson
jlne.ws/18SDf7K

MarketsWiki Recent Updates

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Jay Caauwe; Mark Ibbotson; Robert Fitzsimmons; Hank Mlynarski

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Lead Stories

JPMorgan eyes $4bn ‘pay for peace’ deal
Kara Scannell and Tom Braithwaite in New York – FT.com
JPMorgan Chase is in talks to pay over $4bn in a “pay for peace” deal with US authorities to settle a host of allegations of wrongdoing in the mortgage securities market, according to people familiar with the matter.
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LME Halts Electronic Trading Due to Technical Issues
Laura Clarke – WSJ.com
The London Metal Exchange halted trading on its electronic platform Tuesday morning due to technical problems, a spokesperson confirmed.
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ICAP ordered to pay $87 million fine in Libor rigging settlement
Reuters
ICAP, the world’s largest interdealer broker, has been fined $87 million by U.S. and UK regulators over its role in the Libor rate rigging scandal in the fourth regulatory settlement to emerge from a sprawling, global investigation.
jlne.ws/15sZLU5

Nasdaq OMX steps up efforts to support SMEs
Anna Irrera – Financial News
Nasdaq OMX is boosting its efforts to support capital raisings for European small and medium-sized enterprises, becoming the latest exchange to improve its junior listings services in Sweden.
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U.S. set to reveal criminal charges against ICAP staff in Libor probe: WSJ
Reuters
The U.S. Justice Department is expected to disclose criminal charges against former and current employees of ICAP Plc as soon as Wednesday for allegedly manipulating benchmark interest rates, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the planned charges.
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CFTC Issues Order of Temporary Registration as a Swap Execution Facility to INFX SEF Inc.
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Gold exchange mulled
Bangkok Post
Seven local gold futures dealers have proposed the central bank and capital market regulators set up a spot gold exchange to enhance Thailand as a regional gold trading hub. But Kritcharat Hirunyasiri, the president of MTS Gold, said for such a market to have an edge over others in Southeast Asia, regulations governing the market must be relaxed.
jlne.ws/1flJ6pM

ISDA timetables benchmark reform as FCA confirms ISDAfix probe
Louise Bowman – Euromoney magazine
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) finds itself fighting regulatory fires on two fronts, as it works on its response to the European Commission’s (EC) recent accusation of anti-competitive behaviour.
jlne.ws/1flJ6pN

Regulators haven’t solved ‘too big to fail’ – Morgan Stanley executive
Reuters via Yahoo! Finance
By Lauren Tara LaCapra – The problem of some banks being “too big to fail” remains because global regulators have not come up with a coordinated way to wind them down without causing market-wide disruptions, a senior Morgan Stanley executive said on Tuesday.
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Lawmaker urges probe of possible energy market manipulation
Ben Goad – The Hill’s RegWatch
The chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee called Tuesday upon regulators to launch an investigation into possible manipulation of the market for ethanol credits. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) is asking the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) to look into reports of suspicious activity involving Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), which are assigned to ethanol-blended fuels that meet the Renewable Fuels Standard and traded in the financial sector.
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***DA: RINs are a frontier town in need of a sheriff.

Financial Tech gets audit shocker before today’s AGM
Business Standard
Deloitte Haskins & Sells, the auditor of Financial Technologies (FT), has said the company’s results for the year ended March should no longer be relied upon due to the crisis at group company National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL). As a result, the company was deferring the passing of three items from its 25th annual general meeting on Wednesday, it said in a release to stock exchanges on Tuesday.
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Germany’s strange parallel universe
Martin Wolf – FT.com
Angela Merkel’s remarkable election result confirms her position as the dominant politician in Germany and so also in Europe. It is assumed she will get the eurozone she wants: Germany writ large. That may prove right. Alas, if she does, it is going to be a deeply depressing spectacle.
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Regulatory

Bharara Acknowledges That Budget Issues Are Straining His Office
WILLIAM ALDEN – NYTimes.com
When federal prosecutors go after a bank or a hedge fund, they often have to face an all-star team of high-priced lawyers. But there may come a day when the government simply cannot work its way around being outgunned, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said at a conference in New York on Tuesday.
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[Video] Mary Jo White Shakes Up the SEC
Bloomberg
Stephanie Ruhle speaks with Peter Cook about his interview with SEC Chairman Mary Jo White at the Bloomberg Markets Top 50 Summit. They speak on Bloomberg Television’s “Market Makers.”
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[Video] SEC Chairman White: `Zero Tolerance’ on Exchanges
Bloomberg
SEC chairman Mary Jo White talks with Peter Cook at the Bloomberg Markets 50 summit on new procedures to ensure systems at exchanges to protect traders and investors.
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[Video] National Futures Association Chairman Hehymer on the Future of Technology at IMD Chicago 2013
WatersTechnology
Chris Hehymer, chairman of the board of the National Futures Association comments on his afternoon keynote speech and subsequent panel discussion at Inside Market Data Chicago
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CFTC Certifies Futures Contract on S&P BSE 100 Index Submitted by BSE Ltd (BSE)
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Division of Market Oversight issued a letter advising the BSE that its S&P BSE 100 Index futures contract submitted for review on August 8, 2013 is deemed certified.
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Federal Regulators Issue Guidance on Reporting Financial Abuse of Older Adults
Seven federal regulatory agencies today issued guidance to clarify that the privacy provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act generally permit financial institutions to report suspected elder financial abuse to appropriate authorities.
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Action Urged on High-Speed Traders’ Early Access to Data
MICHAEL ROTHFELD AND BRODY MULLINS – WSJ.com
NEW YORK—New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called on officials in Washington to take action to prevent high-speed traders from making investments based on early peeks at market-moving data and analyst reports in what he called “Insider Trading 2.0.”
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Exchanges & Trading Facilities

EEX to introduce new fee model and lower entry barriers to exchange trading
On 1 January 2014, the European Energy Exchange (EEX) will introduce a new fee model for exchange membership. With this fee model, EEX will re-structure the cost of annual membership and significantly reduce the fees for becoming a trading participant on the exchange.
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HKEx to Alibaba: Thanks, but No Thanks
Isabella Steger – MoneyBeat – WSJ
Waving goodbye to the prospect of a multi-billion dollar initial public offering from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. couldn’t have been an easy move for the Hong Kong stock exchange. The Wall Street Journal reports Wednesday that the e-commerce giant ended discussions with Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd.0388.HK -1.17% over its listing plans and is now moving toward a New York listing.
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Rusal asks LME to postpone proposed warehouse overhaul
Reuters
Russia’s United Company Rusal , the world’s biggest producer of aluminium, said on Wednesday it has asked the London Metal Exchange (LME) to postpone the proposed overhaul of rules that govern its global warehouse network.
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Misra’s derivatives exchange unveils first board
Tim Cave – Financial News
The derivatives exchange group being created by Hirander Misra, a former founder of Chi-X Europe, has finalised its first board, prior to a launch during the first half of next year.
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Borsa Italiana acquires the majority stock of EuroTLX
Borsa Italiana today announces the completion of the acquisition of 70 per cent of the share capital of EuroTLX SIM S.p.A., an Italian company jointly owned by Unicredit and IntesaSanpaolo Group (through Banca IMI S.p.A.), operating a multilateral trading facility in the retail fixed income market.
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Uniqa: Vienna Stock Exchange Pleased About Lively Capital Inflows
The Vienna Stock Exchange is very pleased about the lively inflows of capital into the Austrian market and – after the major capital increase by Erste Bank in July – believes that Uniqa’s secondary offering will create further impulses to stimulate the domestic market.
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ASX AGM – Chairman And Managing Director And CEO’s Addresses
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NYSE MKT Issues Short Interest Report
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NASDAQ Announces Mid-Month Open Short Interest Positions In NASDAQ Stocks As Of Settlement Date September 13, 2013
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Hedge Funds & Managed Futures

FARPs are go!
Izabella Kaminska | FT Alphaville
The Fed’s first trial of its Fixed Rate Full-Allotment Reverse Repo (FRFARRP — what we’re calling FARPs for short) facility has been completed and it looks like the New York Fed accepted $11.81bn in cash as part of the operation
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A Hedge Fund Manager Who Doesn’t Mind a Losing Bet
ALEXANDRA STEVENSON – NYTimes.com
Meet Mark Spitznagel, the hedge fund manager who doesn’t mind a losing bet. Mr. Spitznagel, the founder of Universa Investments, which has around $6 billion in assets under management, says the stock market is going to fall by at least 40 percent in one great market “purge.” Until then, he is paying for the option to short the market at just that point, losing money each time he does.
jlne.ws/1flJ4Ox

Hedge Funds Increase Use of Cloud
Zarna Patel – Wall Street & Technology
Hedge fund and investment management firms are currently using cloud more than they were a year ago, according to a survey commissioned by EzeCastle Integration, a cloud services, IT solution and technology consulting firm for hedge funds and alternative investment firms.
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New York Life purchases Dexia asset management arm
Reuters
After less than a week of negotiations, New York Life Investments announced Tuesday that it had agreed to purchase Dexia Asset Management for 380 million euro ($512 million).
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Credit Suisse and Qatar fund back ex-Pioneer hedge fund team
Harriet Agnew – Financial News
Aventicum Capital, a joint venture between Credit Suisse and Qatar Holding that launched last year, plans to make a seed investment in a new European long/short equity hedge fund.
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Riverstone fund targets £1.5bn London listing
Richard Partington – Financial News
Riverstone Energy, a new fund fronted by Sir Robert Wilson, the former chairman of gas company BG Group, has filed for an initial public offering in London that could raise up to £1.5 billion.
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Billionaire Hedge Fund Managers Say It’s Sad Larry Summers Won’t Get The Fed Nomination
Business Insider
Billionaire hedge fund managers Marc Lasry and Glenn Dubin both said during a panel at the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit that Larry Summers would have made a great Fed chair nomination.
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CMCRC – New Analytics Improve Accuracy Of Predicting Daily Stock Returns
Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre (CMCRC), the Australian independent academic centre for capital market research, has found that models that aim to predict daily stock returns perform better when they combine text data (e.g. News announcements) and financial quantitative data (e.g. financial statements).
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Banks & Brokers

J.P. Morgan’s Legal Headaches: A Tally
David Benoit – MoneyBeat – WSJ
J.P. Morgan has had its fill of legal headaches. To solve a large chunk of the problem, the bank is now making a big offer: It will pay what would amount to one of the biggest fines in history to the Department of Justice to wipe clean the slate with prosecutors. WSJ says it has offered $3 billion for a global settlement.
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Next bank stress test cycle to include Basel III -U.S. Fed
Reuters
U.S. banks must incorporate the strict new Basel III capital rules in the next set of the surveys of their financial health known as stress tests, the Federal Reserve said on Tuesday.
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Top BofA Executive Under Fire for Libor Testimony
David Enrich – MoneyBeat – WSJ
The latest development in the years-long Libor saga arrives today with news that a top Bank of AmericaBAC -0.35% executive faces criticism for supposedly misleading a U.K. Parliamentary committee about his Libor testimony earlier this year.
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More capital makes banks safer. Except when it doesn’t
Ben Wright – Financial News
There is a fair degree of stuff and nonsense spouted in the debate about bank capital. Earlier this month, Sir John Vickers, the economist who chaired the UK’s Independent Commission on Banking, kicked it all off again when he said that, in a perfect world, banks should raise their core Tier 1 capital ratios to 20%.
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Pink Slips Flying in Mortgage Business
Shayndi Raice – MoneyBeat – WSJ
Citigroup Inc. is the latest bank to announce a round of mortgage layoffs, bringing the total in the industry to at least 7,000 since the mortgage refinance boom started to cool off quickly earlier this year.
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Bankers edge towards the exit door
Matt Turner – Financial News
It is said that money can’t buy you love. For the investment banking industry, you can add good morale and loyalty to that list.
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Ex-Credit Suisse bank research head returns to the City
Matt Turner – Financial News
The former head of Credit Suisse’s banks equity research team, who left the City of London in 2011 to teach maths, is returning to the industry to take up a role at Exane BNP Paribas.
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GFI Group Voted FX and Credit Interdealer Broker of the Year by Derivatives Intelligence, an Institutional Investor Publication
GFI Group Inc. announced today that it has been voted FX and Credit Interdealer Broker of the Year by Derivatives Intelligence. GFI was selected by traders for providing the best liquidity and pricing in credit derivatives over the last year in both credit indices and single names. In electronic markets, the GFI CreditMatch platform was lauded for its pricing consistency.
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Clearing & Settlement

Mark Ibbotson named head of UK clearing group GH Financials
Philip Stafford – FT.com
GH Financials, an independent clearing company, has appointed Mark Ibbotson, the former co-head of NYSE Liffe, as its new group chief executive as part of the UK group’s aggressive global expansion plan.
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Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) Recognition Formalises LCH.Clearnet’s Risk Management Offerings To Canadian Market Participants
LCH.Clearnet Limited (LCH.Clearnet), a leading global clearing house, has been granted clearing agency recognition by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), for interest rate swaps, bonds and repos, and other cleared contracts*, for Canadian market participants based in Ontario, where a large proportion of Canadian market activity occurs.
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Integral Announces Launch of Integral SEF (ISEF)
Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance
Integral Development Corp., a leading provider of FX trading solutions and services, announced today that it launched Integral SEF, offered through INFX SEF, a fully-owned subsidiary of Integral Development Corp.
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Indexes & Products

STOXX Launches Sustainability Weighted Version Of Leading Blue-Chip Indices
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Moscow Exchange Indices Weekly Review: September 16-20, 2013
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American Independence Launches Risk-Managed Allocation Fund, an ETF-Based Asset Allocation Strategy Focused on Long Term Growth
American Independence Financial Services, LLC, a New York-based investment advisory firm and manager of mutual funds and separate accounts, today announced the launch of the American Independence Risk-Managed Allocation Fund, an actively managed, ETF-based global asset allocation strategy.
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Technology

TMX Atrium offers low latency access to Moscow from Equinix Frankfurt
TMX Atrium, provider of smarter infrastructure solutions for the financial community, has further refined its access options into the Equinix FR2 International Business ExchangeT data centre in Frankfurt.
jlne.ws/1flJ7Kl

Numerix focuses on cutting-edge models for dominant pricing in latest CrossAsset release
Numerix, the provider of cross-asset analytics for derivatives valuations and risk management, has announced new model innovation now available in Numerix CrossAsset, its analytics framework for structuring, pricing and managing the risk of any derivative. The Universal Local Stochastic Volatility Model with Jumps (ULSVJ) aims to make pricing and risk tools for semi-exotic derivatives such as barrier options more accurate and robust in terms of performance.
jlne.ws/1flJ7Kr

Kit Malthouse, London’s Deputy Mayor For Business And Enterprise, Opens Volta’s Central London Data Centre
Multi-Million Pound Investment Boosts London’s Technology Infrastructure – Financial Services, Enterprise, Media & Content Industries To Benefit
jlne.ws/1flJ5C8

Groundbreaking Results For High Performance Trading With FPGA And x86 Technologies
Argon Design, a design services company specializing in complex digital systems has developed a high performance trading system using a heterogeneous mix of technologies to minimize trading latency.
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Enforcement

CFTC Orders Florida Company Newbridge Metals, LLC to Pay over $1.5 Million in Restitution for Illegal, Off-Exchange Precious Metals Transactions
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today issued an Order filing and simultaneously settling charges against Newbridge Metals, LLC, based in Boca Raton, Florida, for engaging in illegal off-exchange precious metals transactions.
jlne.ws/1eEBTzR

NFA revokes registration of introducing broker Gold Coast Futures Group and its associated person Stanley C. Brooks
National Futures Association (NFA) has revoked the registration of introducing broker Gold Coast Futures Group (Gold Coast) of San Clemente, California, and Stanley C. Brooks, an associated person and Gold Coast’s sole listed principal.
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SEC Charges Former President of California-Based Investment Firm With Fraud
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged the former president of a purported private equity real estate firm based in San Bernardino, Calif., with defrauding nearly 500 investors who purchased promissory notes under the false premise that they were secured by specific properties or other collateral.
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SEC Charges Two Bank Executives for Financial Misstatements and Failure to Disclose Probable Loss on Troubled Loan
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two former bank executives at Illinois-based Mercantile Bancorp with failing to recognize in financial statements a probable loss on one of the bank’s largest troubled loans.
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Trial Delayed for Former SAC Executive
PETER LATTMAN – NYTimes.com
The insider trading trial of Mathew Martoma, the former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager, has been delayed by two months, a federal judge said on Tuesday.
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[AMF Canada] Penal proceedings related to illegal distributions of Millenia Hope
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Environmental & Energy

Opponents ramp up fight against Obama climate plan
AP
Republican lawmakers and industry groups are vowing to fight President Barack Obama’s climate change plan and its first-ever emission limits on new power plants. But they’re finding their options are limited – at least in the short term.
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Cap-and-trade on back burner
Winnipeg Free Press
Six years ago, then-Manitoba premier Gary Doer escorted Arizona governor Janet Napolitano and British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell to Churchill to witness the effects of climate change first-hand, and the three pledged to work on a regional cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
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Airlines Face Carbon Verdict on $708 Billion Industry
Bloomberg
Nations from the U.S. to Russia and the European Union are set for a final showdown over the first-ever global commitment to designing an emissions-reduction market tool for the $708 billion airline industry.
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Asia-Pacific

Korean Bonds Win Haven Status; Issuance Takes Off
Fiona Law – MoneyBeat – WSJ
South Korea is poised to issue a record amount of bonds in September as investors seek the relative safety of Korean assets amid uncertainty over the outlook for emerging markets.
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[OSE] Appointment of Executive Officer
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Dalian Commodity Exchange Details Delivery Quality Standards Of Iron Ore Futures
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Frontier Markets

Argentina, going ex-Frontier?
Paul Murphy | FT Alphaville
The FTSE index people at the LSE on Tuesday published their annual review of country classifications. There were no actual movements between the categories — Developed, Advanced Emerging, Secondary Emerging and Frontier — although two countries have joined the FTSE watch list
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Brazil markets will instigate policy change – BlackRock
Rob Dwyer – Euromoney magazine
BlackRock’s Gerardo Rodriguez Regordosa says he believes that the markets are punishing Brazil for policy mistakes and that this is likely to lead to a shift in economic policy by the government of Latin America’s biggest economy.
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Africa: Islamic finance looks south of the Sahara
Sherelle Jacobs – Euromoney magazine
With 240 million Muslims – a number expected to grow 60% in the next two decades – Africa has big potential for Islamic finance. And in recent months there have been rustlings of progress in getting the industry off the ground on the continent.
jlne.ws/1flJ5SK

Tadawul Bolsters Trading Technology, Extends Contract With NASDAQ OMX
The NASDAQ OMX Group and the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) have today entered into an agreement to upgrade Tadawul’s current trading platform. As part of the agreement Tadawul will also continue to leverage the existing suite of market surveillance and CSD technologies that have been supported by NASDAQ OMX since 2006.
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FTSE Country Classification Annual Review
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NSEL defaults sixth time; pays only Rs 11.45 cr to investors
Business Standard
Crisis-ridden National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) today made the sixth straight payment default, as it could pay only Rs 11.45 crore to investors out of the scheduled amount of Rs 174.72 crore.
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NSEL investors want assets of Shah, directors attached
Business Standard
National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) investors are planning to move court for the recovery of their investments through the attachment of the personal assets of the exchange’s vice-chairman Jignesh Shah, its directors, members and their clients.
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Bursa Malaysia Securities Publicly Reprimands D’nonce Technology Bhd For Breach Of Main Market Listing Requirements
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