Industry news

February 4, 2013: U.K. to Give Regulators Powers to Split Up Banks; Intercontinental Credit-Swap Futures Said to Shield Default Risk; Many guises of an equities trader

The UK plans to give its regulators the power to split up banks that refuse to ring-fence retail banking from higher-risk investment divisions. ICE is working to introduce futures contracts designed to shield investors from the risk of borrower default. Some banks combine high-touch brokers and low-touch trading desks, and find that the combination is working. In First Read today, take a look at “The Next Round of Competition”, as Jim Kharouf peers at the road ahead for brokers; you’ve got another chance to watch the JLN video interview with Alan Grigoletto of the OIC; and we’ve got a fresh interview with David Field of Rule Financial, who talks about regulatory reform in 2013.

First Read

The Next Round of Competition
By Jim Kharouf
Sometimes it is the small innovation or service that changes an industry.

Trading Technologies (TT) announced last week the launch of a new trading function that allows TT customers to choose which brokers they will route their orders through on its X_Trader platform. In other words, if you want to trade 100 crude oil futures, you can route 10 contracts through one broker, 50 to another and 30 to another and 10 to another, all from one trading screen.

This could be a game changer for the futures industry.

This technology is not groundbreaking, as other technology vendors already offer it, from Bloomberg to Realtick to Thethys and Trading Screen. But none of those firms have the futures footprint of TT. And in that sense, the new multi-broker solution could usher in a new era of competition among FCMs and choice for end-users. TT’s multi-broker functionality is in the beta testing stage, and also includes 11 banks, who have agreed to adopt the service including: BofA Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Jefferies, Macquarie Bank Limited, Mizuho Securities USA, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets and UBS.

Why would a broker ever want to be put on a system that could ultimately route order flow away from it? Because that broker believes it is better than the competition. So far, 11 FCMs think they have what it takes to not only keep existing customers but add new accounts as well.

When thinking about the impact of this concept, one example comes to mind. The airline and travel industry, has been massively challenged and changed with the introduction and spread of online travel booking sites such as Orbitz, Priceline, Travelocity and others. Customers have always had a choice of airline, but now individuals have more transparency on pricing and ability to pick the right trip for them. And customers have responded. Orbitz, launched in June 2001, was initially supported by five major airlines and drew 2 million visitors in its first month. Last year, the company said it handled more than 18 million per month.

TT’s solution just offers potential competition and convenience to its customers in a similar way. TT plans to expand that FCM list as the beta testing leads to a full launch planned for this summer.

The question is whether TT’s service will attract more FCMs, particularly Goldman Sachs and Newedge. The other issue is whether TT might take this service to another level – offering brokers a chance to display commissions, discounts or other services that might garner new customers to their platform.

It is a fine line to walk for TT, but the fact that it has created this service and found buy-in from both customers and the solid group of FCMs already is a sign a change in the industry may be brewing.

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Alan Grigoletto on OIC’s new education efforts
MarketsWiki.tv

Alan Grigoletto was recently promoted to vice president, education at the Options Industry Council (OIC), where he is responsible for expanding OIC’s educational efforts, including developing educational programs for the European markets. He was interviewed by Sarah Rudolph of John Lothian News about the challenges for market makers in the current atmosphere and OIC’s response to those issues, the growing use of options by pension funds and others, what’s ahead for options volume, and the OIC’s new seminars for 2013.

Watch the video »

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EU and UK’s Regulatory Alphabet, from EMIR to FTT to LCR and LEI
David Field is keeping a close eye on regulation in Europe and the US as executive director of Rule Financial, a transatlantic, business and IT consultancy to the global investment banking community. Field spoke with John Lothian News’ editor-at-large Doug Ashburn about the latest regulatory news from Europe and the UK. Field says 2013 will be a big year for regulatory reforms in Europe as EMIR’s standards kick in. He also discusses the good and bad of the financial transaction tax (FTT) and the potential impact of a UK withdrawal from the European Union.

Q: Now that we are into 2013, what are the key regulatory issues that will be looked at, proposed and/or finalized in the coming year?

A: From a European perspective, one of the biggest pieces of regulation that will really start to bite this year is the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). That is Europe’s equivalent of the Dodd-Frank Act, and driving toward mandatory clearing and things that are operationally proven to reduce risk around OTC derivatives. This includes both cleared and uncleared assets, which is forcing more collateralization and central clearing.

EMIR technical standards are slated to come into force in the first quarter of 2013, once they do, CCPs will have to apply to regulators for approval and (re)authorization will be granted for this over the course of the year.

Like Dodd-Frank, EMIR requires trade reporting into the equivalent of swap data repositories. This data will be required for all issuers over the course of the year, with both interest rate and credit default swaps by the summer and everything else by end of the year. Mandatory clearing itself, with its latest date, could happen in 2014, but all the work the banks have to do needs to be in 2013.

For the rest of the interview, visit MarketsReformWiki at jlne.ws/YH9vpF

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[CBOE] Trading Volume in Vix Futures Rose to New Record in January
The CBOE Futures Exchange, LLC (CFE) announced today that trading activity in futures on the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) set several new records in January 2013, including total monthly volume, total monthly average daily volume, single-day volume and open interest.
jlne.ws/14zKZ9y

**** Volatility is in a class of its own.

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OneChicago Announces Trading Volume for January 2013
Security futures volume at the exchange in January 2013 was up 78% year-over-year, compared with January 2012
jlne.ws/14zL1hG

***** Competitive and transparent securities lending gaining ground.

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Fun Fades at Investing Clubs
E.S. BROWNING – WSJ.com
Members of Don Danko’s investment club in Lake Orion, Mich., are friends who exercise together, drink beer together, and, at club meetings, lament the stock market’s uncertainty together. Four of his friends yanked money out of the club. One member persuaded the group to buy a gold fund. The mood of remaining members, most of them united by their commitment to a nearby Catholic church, is strained.
jlne.ws/14zKZpX

***** Equities are alive. Look again.

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TriOptima uses gaming to measure risk
Philip Stafford – FT.com
Technology used by computer gamers rather than traders is to become part of a new push to meet regulatory demands as banks and brokers seek to determine how much capital they need to hold.
jlne.ws/14zKZq4

***** Just don’t tilt the program.

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Banks, at Least, Had a Friend in Geithner
GRETCHEN MORGENSON – NYTimes.com
TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER left the Treasury Department last week after four years as secretary. So how did he do?
jlne.ws/14zL1y7

***** Just like in Toy Story.

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Edward Koch, Brash New York Mayor in 1980s, Dies at 88
Mark Schoifet – Bloomberg
Edward I. Koch, the outspoken three- term New York mayor who led the biggest U.S. city from the brink of bankruptcy in the late 1970s and boosted the spirits of crime-weary residents, has died. He was 88.
jlne.ws/14zKZGq

***** He was New York for a long time.

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Greenspan Writes of Forecasting Perils
JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG – WSJ.com
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose first mainstream book was a best seller, is coming back for another bite at the publishing apple. Pearson PLC’s Penguin Press says it will issue Mr. Greenspan’s new work, a look at economic decision making titled “The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature and the Future of the World Economy,” on Oct. 22.
jlne.ws/14zKZGv

***** Mr. Greenspan’s crystal ball has become cloudier as time has wore on.

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Writing on the Wall: What Can Help Restore Investor Trust? Maybe the SEC
DAVID WEIDNER – WSJ.com
Let’s cut to the chase: The Securities and Exchange Commission needs to get tougher. If polls about market trustworthiness are any indication, faith in the SEC is near an all-time low. Many investors feel the game is rigged. They feel at the mercy of high-frequency traders and big brokerages. Even the issuers feel their securities are being used as pawns in a game.
jlne.ws/14zL1ya

***** Tougher? How about tough?

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Harvard’s Birk Shuns Wall Street for Spot in Super Bowl
Nancy Kercheval & Aaron Kuriloff – Bloomberg
Matt Birk turned down a Wall Street job out of Harvard University to play in the National Football League, a career move that paid off in a Super Bowl berth with the Baltimore Ravens 15 years later. Birk, an economics major, had a summer internship with Prudential Securities Inc. after his junior year at Harvard and was offered a job upon graduation.
jlne.ws/14zKZGB

***** Super Bowl Center gets attention.

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Twitter’s video app lures big brands
Tim Bradshaw – FT.com
For some brand advertisers, six seconds is the new 30 seconds. Even as this weekend’s Super Bowl hits a new high for traditional TV advertising, where half a minute of airtime costs a record $4m, several big brands are leaping on to Twitter’s new video app Vine despite its enforced brevity.
jlne.ws/14zKZWR

****** Six seconds can be an eternity, depending on what you are doing.

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MarketsWiki

MarketsWiki Recent Updates

People

R. Jason Weller; Hazem Dawani; Robert Ouzounian

Companies, Organizations and Groups

FXMarketSpace; CME Group, Inc.; National Futures Association; OptionsCity Software Inc.

Statistics

34,382,491 pages viewed, 7,355 articles, 152,923 edits
MarketsWiki Statistics

Lead Stories

U.K. to Give Regulators Powers to Split Up Banks
AINSLEY THOMSON AND MAX COLCHESTER – WSJ.com
U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne on Monday will announce new powers for regulators to split up banks that flout rules designed to ring-fence retail banking from riskier investment-banking activity.
jlne.ws/14zKZWY

Intercontinental Credit-Swap Futures Said to Shield Default Risk
Matthew Leising – Bloomberg
Credit swap index futures planned by Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) are being designed to shield investors from the risk of underlying borrowers defaulting, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
jlne.ws/14zL1Oz

Many guises of an equities trader
Tim Cave – Financial News
A jack of all trades is a master of none, or so a wise man once said. It is an adage that some European equities traders are trying desperately hard to disprove. Against last year’s backdrop of anaemic trading volumes and diminished commission wallets, several leading banks sought solace from the slump by combining their high-touch and low-touch trading desks.
jlne.ws/14zKZX0

OCC Said to Admit Missing JPMorgan’s VaR Change in Probe
Dawn Kopecki & Cheyenne Hopkins – Bloomberg
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency told lawmakers it missed changes to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s risk-tracking system that could have alerted the watchdog sooner to the lender’s mounting derivatives bets, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.
jlne.ws/14zL1OF

Knight Capital gears up for equities push
Tim Cave – Financial News
Knight Capital, the US broker set for a $1.8bn merger with high-frequency trading firm Getco, is planning a renewed push into European equities as its rivals cut back.
jlne.ws/14zL1OI

LME’s Only Woman Trader Leaves to Join Hong Kong Exchanges
Agnieszka Troszkiewicz – Bloomberg
Bethan Wilde, the only woman trader on the floor of the London Metal Exchange, was hired by Hong Kong Exchanges (388) & Clearing Ltd. as senior manager of business development and strategy.
jlne.ws/14zL2SA

MF Global trustee says clients may be made whole
AP
Former brokerage customers of MF Global could fully recover cash that was frozen when the trading firm collapsed, according to the bankruptcy trustee in the Chapter 11 case.
jlne.ws/14zL2SD

EU Aims to Free Flow of Funds Across Borders
MATTHEW DALTON – WSJ.com
BRUSSELS—The European Union has asked national bank regulators in the 27-nation bloc to explain policies that may be preventing free flows of funds across national borders, the first public step in a campaign by EU authorities to combat fragmentation of the region’s financial markets.
jlne.ws/14zL251

Libor tender expected ‘shortly’
Michelle Price – Financial News
The task of choosing a new administrator for the scandal-hit Libor-setting process will begin “shortly”, a UK Treasury spokesman told Financial News last week.
jlne.ws/14zL254

Regulatory

SEC chief: Money-market fund reform high on agenda
Market Watch
WASHINGTON — Reform of the $2.7 trillion money-market fund industry is one of the top issues that the Securities and Exchange Commission will tackle in the coming months, agency chairman Elisse Walter told reporters Friday.
jlne.ws/14zL259

SEC Chairman Walter coy about her future at the agency
Reuters via Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON – Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Elisse Walter said Friday she is unsure how long she will stay at the agency after Mary Jo White is confirmed by the Senate as the SEC’s new chief.
jlne.ws/14zL396

Gloves come off in fight over Emir
Michelle Price – Financial News
The European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, known as Econ, is today poised to reject key details of new European derivatives reforms in a development that European policy experts have described as “precedent-setting” for the future of the European policymaking process.
jlne.ws/14zL39b

Opening Remarks At Meeting Of Advisory Committee On Small And Emerging Companies By SEC Chairman Elisse Walter
jlne.ws/14zL2lv

ISDA Response To ESMA Consultation Paper: ‘Guidelines For Establishing Consistent, Efficient And Effective Assessments Of Interoperability Arrangements’
jlne.ws/14zL39l

ESMA Is Seeking Candidates For Its Investment Management Consultative Working Group
Candidates should apply by 4 March 2013. For further information, please
jlne.ws/14zL2lC

[ASIC] Make a date to talk about money
jlne.ws/14zL2lF

[Japan] FSA publishes Weekly Review No.31
jlne.ws/14zL2lM

Exchanges & Trading Facilities

Turnover At Deutsche Boerse’s Cash Markets At 94.6 Billion Euros In January
Order book turnover on Xetra, the Xetra Frankfurt Specialist trading and Tradegate stood at E94.6 billion in January (January 2012: E107.6 billion). Of the E94.6 billion, E85.5 billion were attributable to Xetra (January 2012: E99.1 billion). E5.2 billion were attributable to the Xetra Frankfurt Specialist trading (January 2012: E5.3 billion). Order book turnover on Tradegate Exchange* totalled approximately E3.9 billion in January (January 2012: E3.2 billion).
jlne.ws/14zL3pO

Average Daily Volume Of 8.7 Million Contracts At Eurex Group In January
In January 2013, the international derivatives exchanges of Eurex Group recorded an average daily volume of 8.7 million contracts (January 2012: 8.2 million). Of those, 5.9 million were Eurex Exchange contracts (January 2012: 5.5 million), and 2.7 million contracts were at the U.S.-based International Securities Exchange (ISE) (January 2012: 2.7 million). In total, 188.2 million contracts were traded, thereof 129.9 million at Eurex and 58.2 million at the ISE.
jlne.ws/14zL2C4

THE OPTIONS INDUSTRY COUNCIL ANNOUNCES JANUARY OPTIONS VOLUME RISES 7.7 PERCENT ON STRONGEST VOLUME SINCE MAY
The Options Industry Council (OIC) announced today that 361,071,621 total options contracts were traded in January. That is a 7.65 percent increase from January last year when 335,399,999 contracts were traded, and the highest monthly volume since May 2012.
jlne.ws/14zL2C9

MGEX Reports Year Over Year Volume And Open Interest Growth
Total volume was reported at 96,630, a 3.6 percent increase from January 2012 and a 26.6 percent increase from December 2012. Hard Red Spring Wheat (HRSW) and Apple Juice Concentrate (AJC) futures accounted for 95,280 contracts traded while options accounted for 1,350 contracts traded.
jlne.ws/14zL2Cf

ISE Reports Business Activity For January 2013
The International Securities Exchange (ISE) today reported average daily volume of 2.8 million contracts in January 2013. This represents an increase of 3.1% compared to January 2012. Total options volume for the month was 58.3 million contracts. ISE was the second largest U.S. equity options exchange in January with market share of 18.2%*.
jlne.ws/14zL3Gc

BOX Options Exchange Price Improvement Activity For January
In the month of January, price improved contracts on BOX Options Exchange (“BOX”) averaged 214,940 per day. Price improvement versus the prevailing NBBO for contracts submitted via BOX’s price improvement auction, PIP, averaged $195,754 per day, while total savings to investors this month were $4.1 MM. With this, BOX has saved investors over $416 MM since its inception in 2004. Overall average daily trading volume on BOX in the month of January was 436,991 contracts.
jlne.ws/14zL3Gd

Key figures SIX Swiss Exchange and Scoach Switzerland: January 2013
In January 2013, turnover on SIX Swiss Exchange and Scoach Switzerland totalled CHF 90.8 billion. This corresponds to a 50.3% increase over the previous month and a plus of 14.6% over January 2012. The number of transactions likewise reported a strong increase, up by 52.0% over the previous month to 2,947,832 and up by 5.9% over January 2012.
jlne.ws/14zL3Gi

Turnover At Boerse Stuttgart Around EUR 8.7 Billion In January
Boerse Stuttgart generated turnover of just under EUR 8.7 billion in January 2013, according to its order book statistics. Market conditions were considerably improved, with turnover up 58 percent compared with the previous month. The transaction volume was at the same level as in January 2012.
jlne.ws/14zL5xL

The Spanish Stock Exchange Traded E67.75 Billion In January
The equity trading volume on the Spanish Stock Exchange in January was E67.75 billion, up 18.5% from the previous month and down 3.2% from the same month a year earlier.
jlne.ws/14zL3WR

Nasdaq OMX Nordic Trading Statistics January 2013
The share trading on NASDAQ OMX Nordic decreased by 5.9 % to a daily average of 2.2bn EUR, compared to 2.3bn EUR in January 2012. Compared to the previous month, December 2012, the daily average increased by 19.3 %.
jlne.ws/14zL5xZ

Trading On The Warsaw Stock Exchange : January 2013
jlne.ws/14zL5Or

European Power Exchange: Power Trading Results In January 2013
jlne.ws/14zL4d8

Moscow Exchange Announces Indicative IPO Price Range And Update To Dividend Policy
jlne.ws/14zL4d9

[CBOE] Trader E-News
jlne.ws/14zL5Ou

Rudolf Wöhrl AG plans bond in Entry Standard
jlne.ws/14zL4dc

NYSE Technologies’ Marketplace Welcomes Everbright Securities and GF Securities
jlne.ws/14zL64K

NYSE Euronext Lisbon Awards
jlne.ws/14zL64N

TSX Block List Leaders By Volume And By Values – January 2013
jlne.ws/14zL64S

TOM MTF Statistics Week 5 – 2013
jlne.ws/14zL64T

Hedge Funds & Managed Futures

Star hedge fund manager slams exorbitant fees
Harriet Agnew – Financial News
Cliff Asness, a former Goldman Sachs star and now one of the leading quantitative hedge fund managers, has attacked his own industry for charging exorbitant rates for pedestrian performance.
jlne.ws/14zL64Y

US pension funds sue BlackRock
Steve Johnson and David Ricketts – FT.com
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has systematically “looted” securities lending revenues from investors, according to a lawsuit filed by two US pension funds.
jlne.ws/14zL64Z

Julius Baer boosted by Merrill Lynch
James Shotter in Zürich – FT.com
Julius Baer’s assets under management reached the SFr200bn threshold for the first time, as Switzerland’s largest private bank presses ahead with the integration of the Merrill Lynch businesses it bought last summer from Bank of America.
jlne.ws/14zL651

How one hedge fund seized on fallout from Dodd-Frank
Washington Post
Bloomberg — For many hedge funds, financial rules and state intervention in markets are anathema. Emanuel J. Friedman, former co-chairman of investment bank Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group, sees them as an opportunity.
jlne.ws/14zL4tK

AQR discovers its pyramid of power
Harriet Agnew -Financial News
While AQR Capital Management employs many of the tools of a global macro hedge fund manager, such as leverage, short selling and derivatives, you won’t find its outspoken co-founder Cliff Asness waxing lyrical about macro predictions at dinner parties.
jlne.ws/14zL4tN

DealBook: New Details Suggest a Defense in SAC Case
New York Times
Internal trading records also raise questions on whether the government will be able to build a case against Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire owner of the hedge fund.
jlne.ws/14zL4tO

Pension funds cruise into catastrophe bonds
Sarah Krouse – Financial News
Five years ago, a breakdown of investors in insurance-linked securities listed hedge funds, asset managers, banks, insurance and reinsurance firms. Absent from the list compiled by Swiss Re Capital Markets were pension funds.
jlne.ws/14zL6lj

Private equity manoeuvres for elbow room
Paul Hodkinson – Financial News
The private equity industry continues to grow. Total global assets under management last year rose 4% to $3.2 trillion, the 12th successive year of increase since records began in 2000.
jlne.ws/14zL4tV

We Just Witnessed Another History-Making Week For People Investing In Mutual Funds
Business Insider
Flows into equity funds were stunning in the first three weeks of January, and the final week was no exception. This past week, total equity inflows were $18.8 billion, the third-largest on record, according to BofA Merrill Lynch.
jlne.ws/14zL6lt

Bondholders Have a New Worry: LBOs
PATRICK MCGEE AND MATT WIRZ – WSJ.com
Corporate-bond investors are facing a new threat: private-equity firms launching debt-laden takeovers of companies in their portfolios.
jlne.ws/14zL6lw

CFTC Commitments Of Traders Reports Update
jlne.ws/14zL4K9

Banks & Brokers

Deutsche Bank Said to Limit Immediate Bonuses to $409,000
Ambereen Choudhury – Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Europe’s largest bank by assets, plans to tell employees it will impose a 300,000-euro ($409,000) cap on bonuses being paid this year, said three people with knowledge of the discussions.
jlne.ws/14zL4Ke

Europe’s Banks Urged to Cut Down All Capital-Heavy Units
Bloomberg
The president of the European Banking Federation is urging lenders in the region to reinvent themselves and discard the areas of their business that place too large a capital burden on their balance sheets.
jlne.ws/14zL6BU

Ex-JP Morgan’s Hannam re-emerges with new firm
Matt Turner – Financial News
Ian Hannam, the former JP Morgan banker who stepped down from the US bank in April last year to fight a £450,000 fine levied by the Financial Services Authority, is in the early stages of launching a new investment and advisory firm – Hannam & Partners – with former colleagues, according to sources familiar with the plans.
jlne.ws/14zL4Kf

Capital One Names Former Morgan Stanley CFO Crawford as CFO-Designate
Dow Jones
Capital One Financial Corp. said Friday its Chief Financial Officer Gary Perlin will retire in May, and former Morgan Stanley CFO Stephen Crawford will join the bank to succeed him.
jlne.ws/14zL4Kh

Trial of Len Blavatnik’s Suit Against JPMorgan Ends
Bloomberg
Billionaire Leonard Blavatnik’s lawyers asked a New York judge to hold JPMorgan Chase & Co. responsible for stuffing a fund with risky mortgage securities and losing 10 percent of his $1 billion investment.
jlne.ws/14zL6Sh

RBS Told to Pay Libor Fines From Bonus Pool
CNBC
Royal Bank of Scotland faces the prospect of scrapping all bonuses for its investment bankers this year to free up cash to pay fines for its involvement in a global interest rate rigging scandal.
jlne.ws/14zL6Sk

Citigroup Names Senior Banker in Europe
MARK SCOTT – NYTimes.com
LONDON – Luigi de Vecchi has been appointed chairman of corporate and investment banking for continental Europe at Citigroup, the bank announced on Monday.
jlne.ws/14zL4Kq

Group Finance Director Chris Lucas And Group General Counsel Mark Harding To Retire From Barclays
jlne.ws/14zL50H

Clearing & Settlement

OCC Volume Across All Cleared Products Significantly Rose in January
On Friday, OCC announced that January total cleared contract volume reached 365,027,878 contracts, up 8 percent from January 2012′s volume of 337,222,938 contracts.
jlne.ws/14zL50I

LCH Clearnet Cuts Margins for Trading Some Spanish, French Bonds
Bloomberg
LCH Clearnet Ltd., Europe’s biggest clearing house, reduced the extra deposit it demands from clients to trade some Spanish and French government bonds, it said today in a statement on its website.
jlne.ws/14zL6Sp

CME Group Clearing Advisory: FECPlus FIXML 5.0 Production Deployment Postponed
jlne.ws/14zL50Q

Indexes & Products

ETFs turn 20, remain misunderstood
Chuck Jaffe, MarketWatch
For many investors, exchange-traded funds still feel like a new investment product. They’re not. The first U.S. exchange-traded fund, the SPDR or Spider — formally known as the Standard & Poor’s 500 ETF — celebrated its 20th birthday this week.
jlne.ws/14zL50U

Technology

TriOptima Launches Groundbreaking Counterparty Credit Risk Analytics Service, triQuantify
TriOptima announces today that it is launching triQuantify, a groundbreaking counterparty credit risk analytics service for OTC derivatives. TriOptima has licensed Global Valuation Ltd’s (“GVL”) software to power the new service.
jlne.ws/14zL5hf

S&P Capital IQ’s QuantHouse Operation Selects KVH Data Centre for Low Latency Access to Japanese Exchanges
QuantHouse, S&P Capital IQ’s Real Time operation and the global provider of next generation trading solutions, has aligned with KVH, Asia’s leading information delivery platform, to enable its clients to benefit from proximity to the main Asian exchanges.
jlne.ws/14zL78M

Enforcement

Federal Court Imposes over $2.8 Million in Sanctions against Florida Resident Martin H. Bedick and His Company, Angus Jackson, Inc., for Making False Statements
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced that the Honorable James I. Cohn of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued an order requiring defendants Martin H. Bedick, of Boca Raton, Fla., and his company, Angus Jackson, Inc., of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to pay a civil monetary penalty of more than $1.9 million and to disgorge $955,000 in ill-gotten gains as a result of making false statements to the National Futures Association
jlne.ws/14zL5hk

NFA takes emergency enforcement action against New York firm Prodigy Asset Management LLC and its principal, Ezekiel Abdel Rahman
National Futures Association (NFA) announced today that it has taken an emergency enforcement action against Prodigy Asset Management LLC (PAM), a commodity pool operator (CPO) and commodity trading advisor (CTA) located in New York City, and its principal, Ezekiel Abdel Rahman (Rahman).
jlne.ws/14zL78N

[ASIC] Insurance broker pleads guilty to theft
jlne.ws/14zL5ho

Environmental & Energy

EEX Halves Transaction Fees For CO2 Spot Market
European Energy Exchange (EEX) is cutting transaction fees for trading and clearing of Emission Allowances on the Secondary Spot Market from 6 Euro/1,000 tonnes CO2 to 3 Euro/1,000 tonnes CO2 with immediate effect. Thereby, EEX is enhancing its competitiveness on the spot secondary market for CO2 allowances.
jlne.ws/14zL8cQ

Why Canada Oil-Sands Industry Wants CO2 Tax Harper Hates: Energy
Bloomberg
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vilified political opponents who support a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions. The oil-sands industry, Canada’s fastest growing CO2 polluter, says he’s out of step.
jlne.ws/X82ZU4

**RKB — Interesting dissection of what, yes, seems a contradiction at first read.

U.S. shale gas revolution throws down the gauntlet to Europe
Reuters
The United States is enjoying an energy bonanza thanks to shale gas, making it a magnet for industry, reducing import dependence and challenging Europe as it battles to dig itself out of recession, energy officials say.
jlne.ws/Y4H5Qq

**RKB — France estimated to have Europe’s largest reserves at 180 trillion cubic feet.

Asia-Pacific

Japan Pension Fund’s Bonds Too Many If Abe Succeeds, Mitani Says
Bloomberg
Japan’s public pension fund, the world’s biggest manager of retirement savings, is considering the first changes to its asset structure in seven years as a new government pursues policies that could erode the value of $747 billion in local bonds.
jlne.ws/14zL78Z

China’s red capitalism needs philosophy of the snake
Mike Foster – Financial News
French philosopher Voltaire said the spirit of property doubled a man’s strength. It’s too bad speculators double their gearing to buy the stuff.
jlne.ws/14zL8cT

HKEx: Listing Nominating Committee Seeks Listing Committee Candidates
The Listing Nominating Committee is now seeking applications from individuals interested in serving on the Listing Committee and the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) Listing Committee
jlne.ws/14zL794

Osaka Securities Exchange SPAN Parameter Updated – Feb. 12, 2013 – Feb. 15, 2013
jlne.ws/14zL8cY

Frontier Markets

Foreigners Dominate in Iraqi IPO
ALEX DELMAR-MORGAN in Doha and RORY JONES in Dubai – WSJ.com
Foreigners bought about 70% of a landmark Iraqi share offering, in a key test of foreign investor confidence in the country as it recovers from years of war.
jlne.ws/14zL7po

Iraq stock sale sign of investor confidence
Associated Press via Yahoo! News
BAGHDAD — An Iraqi telecom company raised nearly $1.3 billion Sunday on Baghdad’s small stock exchange in one of the region’s biggest share offers in years — a sign of investor confidence in the fledgling private sector despite violence that still plagues the country.
jlne.ws/14zL8d2

Dubai Group Lenders Said to Decline Offer Made to RBS, Standard
Bloomberg
About 20 lenders to Dubai Group LLC, which is restructuring $6 billion of debt, declined an offer to receive 18.5 cents on the dollar in favor of full repayment over 12 years, according to two bankers familiar with the plan.
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Tehran Stock Exchange Turned 45
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Tehran Stock Exchange Attends The FEAS Executive Committee In Turkey On 26 January 2013
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