Industry news

May 2, 2013: IntercontinentalExchange Sees Global Pricing Fueling Trade in Gas Futures; NYSE CEO Tells SEC He Opposes New Exchange for Small Companies; Clubby London Trading Scene Fostered Libor Rate-Fixing Scandal

IntercontinentalExchange hopes global pricing benchmarks for natural gas will help lift its own gas futures market.  NYSE CEO does not want the SEC endorsing the idea of a separate stock exchange for small companies.  Brokers at London’s Tullett Prebon reportedly took former RBS trader Neil Danziger to strip clubs and on trips to Las Vegas.

First Read

Notes from TAC
Walter Lukken – FIA
After participating in Tuesday’s meeting of the CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee, I came away with a renewed appreciation for the role that this Committee and its chairman, Commissioner Scott O’Malia, are playing in providing a forum for discussing the operational difficulties associated with Dodd-Frank implementation. There were no great surprises—which I’m sure was a big disappointment for all the reporters there to cover the Twitter Hack discussion—and a lot of people probably came away from the meeting thinking that Dodd-Frank implementation is even more full of problems than they realized. But that is exactly what is needed right now—an opportunity for market participants to vent their frustrations and tell the CFTC staff and the commissioners exactly where the problems lie.

So I give Scott a lot of credit for using the TAC to fill the void of providing a forum for airing concerns about the rules and putting a focus on important policy issues that need to be addressed. Whether it moves the needle at all is another question. From my own experience, rulemaking bodies such as the CFTC function best when there is a real give and take at the top of the agency. And Tuesday was an unvarnished and frank view of the difficulties that lie ahead. Not because of a lack of willingness to comply but primarily due to the operational and technological heavy lift associated with many of these rules. And give Chairman Gensler some credit too. He sat through much of the discussion on swap data reporting and I’m sure he came away with a renewed appreciation of the practical problems in that area.

I should add a comment about my own presentation at the committee, which was focused on a specific part of Dodd-Frank rulemaking that is causing serious issues for clearing firms and their customers. I spoke about the implementation of Rule 1.73, which requires pre-trade risk checks, and Rule 1.74, which sets a 60-second deadline for accepting or rejecting swaps for clearing. The good news is that we have come up with potential frameworks for applying Rule 1.73 to give-ups and bunched orders and have begun to discuss and offer these solutions to the industry. An FIA working group has drafted standard agreements for assigning responsibility for the risk checks, and we’re working with market participants to fast-track the negotiation process for those agreements. That said, there’s a huge amount of work to do to get those agreements in place before the second mandatory clearing deadline hits in June.

On the other hand, there are some real challenges with 1.74 and the requirement to accept or reject for clearing swaps within 60 seconds. As we heard at the TAC meeting, the OTC clearing infrastructure is still pretty new and in the early stages we’re bound to see a certain number of trades that should be accepted for clearing but cannot be processed within the CFTC’s 60-second deadline and must be unnecessarily rejected. It’s extremely problematic for the buyside to have a swap transaction rejected, so I was glad to hear the CFTC staff say that they are collecting data and will look at the number of rejections to determine whether to reconsider the FIA proposal for allowing a limited number of exceptions.

As I said at the TAC meeting, we’re all for streamlining the clearing process. What we are asking the CFTC to do is to strike a reasonable balance between encouraging the transition to straight-through processing for cleared swaps while simultaneously allowing firms to manage the risk caused by the swap clearing obligation. A flexible approach, especially at the early stages, will lead to a far more orderly implementation of swaps clearing.

PS: go to the FIA website for a summary of the TAC meeting.
www.futuresindustry.org/downloads/FIA%20Special%20Report.pdf

FIA Principal Traders Group Responds to Wall Street Journal Article Alleging “Loophole” at CME
Washington, D.C.—May 1, 2013—The Futures Industry Association Principal Traders Group issued the following response to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal alleging that high-frequency traders are taking advantage of a “loophole” in the CME Group’s market data systems.

“We were surprised and disappointed at the misleading article published today by the Wall Street Journal. The article has taken an inherent feature of all markets out of context, grossly distorted its significance, and created a false impression that the CME’s markets are fundamentally unfair. In our view, exchanges should be commended for reducing the latency and variability in their trading systems, which leads to better market quality and lower trading costs.

For years, exchanges have invested heavily to compress the amount of time it takes to match incoming trades and transmit trade details to their customers and the public. The CME specifically has succeeded in dramatically slashing this amount of time, vastly improving the quality of its markets for investors and hedgers.

For the rest of the PTG Comment go to: http://jlne.ws/120tz41

CME Group Says It’s Improving Technology to Address Time Lags
Matthew Leising – Bloomberg
CME Group Inc. (CME), the world’s largest futures exchange, said it’s improving its technology to reduce the time between when some customers see trade details and the information is released to the public.
jlne.ws/Ygf10C
***WL: Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal story referring to this as a “loophole” was an overstatement since latency issues have existed since the beginning of these markets. But it’s good to see that CME continues to work to close this gap.

CME Group Statement
CME Group, today released the following statement in response to today’s Wall Street Journal article: While there can be instances of inconsistencies with any technology, CME Group is continually making improvements to our trading platform to increase efficiencies, including variability between the time a firm or customer receives its trade confirmation and it appears on the public data feed.
jlne.ws/Ygf1hd

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OneChicago’s April Security Futures Volume Rises 148% Over Year-Ago
OneChicago, LLC (OCX), an equity finance exchange, today announced April 2013 volume of 567,897, an increase of 148% compared with the same period in 2012.
jlne.ws/Ygf10y

***WL: So far this year volume has been up by double digits in every month compared to the previous year. Something’s going right for these guys!

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ISE Reports It Is The Largest Equity Options Exchange In April 2013
The International Securities Exchange (ISE) today reported an average daily volume of 2.7 million contracts in April 2013. This represents an increase of 4.5% compared to April 2012. Total options volume for the month was 59.8 million contracts. ISE was the largest U.S. equity options exchange in April with a market share of 17.8%*.
jlne.ws/Ygf10z

***WL: Another way to look at this is that no single exchange has more than 20% of the single stock options market in the U.S. If you like uber-competition, you have to love this market!

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April Is Record-Setting Month For VIX Futures Trading At CFE
The CBOE Futures Exchange, LLC announced today that April 2013 was a record-setting month for the trading of futures on the CBOE Volatility Index with new all-time highs in total monthly volume, monthly average daily volume and single-day trading activity.
jlne.ws/YgeZ97

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MGEX Volume up 58 Percent in April
MGEX, a Designated Contract Market and Derivatives Clearing Organization, today announced total Exchange volume in April at 146,574 contracts traded, a 58.3 percent increase from March 2013. Additionally, this is a 29.7 percent increase from April 2012. This is the seventh consecutive month of year over year volume growth and is the top volume month since August 2011.
jlne.ws/Ygf10A

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CFTC’s Chilton Seeks Fee to Slow High Speed Trades
CNBC
Commodities Futures Trading Commissioner Bart Chilton proposes on CNBC a transaction fee on speculative trading that would slow high-frequency trades and help fund his agency.
jlne.ws/YgeZpq

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Tech Poaches Wall Street Talent
JESSICA E LESSIN – WSJ.com
Large and small technology companies, from Square Inc. to Rackspace Hosting Inc., with deep pockets and a pressing need to broaden their workforces are snagging top talent from financial firms.
jlne.ws/YgeZpu

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Bankers Explain How They Cannot Possibly Live On $1 Million Pay
Like many carbon-based lifeforms, you perhaps think that bankers are driven only by naked greed. But that is just because you don’t understand them: They actually have a deep psychological need for that money.
jlne.ws/16sRaj3

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Industry Panel Webinar: The Global Move to Shorter Settlement Cycles
Wednesday 8 May, 11am (ET)/8am (PT)/4pm (BST)
The financial markets, including its participants and regulators, are focused on removing risk from the industry. With many major markets in Asia already on T+2, the European Union poised to move to T+2 by January 2015, and the US exploring shorter settlement cycles in the local market, industry participants worldwide are now focused on the operational impact of supporting this important move.

During this informative, free webinar, an esteemed panel of industry experts will talk more about:
* the global move to SSC, with a specific emphasis on the current efforts underway in the US
* the operational barriers to achieving an accelerated settlement timeline
jlne.ws/Ygf10D

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Lead Stories

IntercontinentalExchange Sees Global Pricing Fueling Trade in Gas Futures
JACOB BUNGE – WSJ.com
The head of IntercontinentalExchange Inc. said efforts to develop global pricing benchmarks for natural gas would help drive a rebound in its own gas-futures market, which has struggled in recent months. The exchange operator is developing a European benchmark futures contract to price natural gas, and expects more cross-border transactions as energy companies take advantage of the low-cost supply flowing from U.S. shale-gas fields.
jlne.ws/YgeZpv

NYSE CEO Tells SEC He Opposes New Exchange for Small Companies
Bloomberg
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shouldn’t encourage the creation of a separate stock exchange for small public companies, the head of NYSE Euronext told an SEC advisory committee today.
jlne.ws/Ygf10F

Rusal CEO Calls On LME To Provide More Transparency
Dow Jones
The London Metal Exchange needs to create a more transparent system for trading base metals so that it attracts more use from customers and producers of industrial metals and not just hedge funds and other speculators, the chief executive of Russian aluminum producer United Co. Rusal PLC said.
jlne.ws/Ygf10G

Lasers, microwave deployed in high-speed trading arms race
Reuters via Yahoo! News
By Eric Onstad LONDON – Laser beams and microwave dishes are the latest weapons in an arms race to shave milliseconds off dealing times in the shadowy world of high-speed, computerized financial trading. Traders, who make money by exploiting tiny, lightning-fast price changes on exchanges, are now targeting Europe and Asia after skirmishing in the United States.
jlne.ws/Ygf10H

MARKIT LAUNCHES CLO PRICING SERVICE
London and New York, NY – Markit, a leading, global financial information services company, today announced the launch of a new service for the pricing of collateralised loan obligation (CLO) tranches.
jlne.ws/15bFAcH

Japanese Financial Firms Seek to Tap Revived Spirit
By ATSUKO FUKASE
TOKYO—As surging stocks fuel optimism in Japan, major financial institutions are hoping to draw wealthy investors, especially cash-rich retirees, into the game.
It’s not a new dream: With more than half of the nation’s household financial assets sitting in bank accounts or even cash kept at home, brokers and financial advisers have been trying to encourage a shift for decades. But Japanese investors have seen the risk repeatedly demonstrated in the years since the 1990 collapse of the bubble economy—most recently when the Nikkei Stock Average shed more than half its value between 2006 and 2011, slipping below 8500.
jlne.ws/YoVkpB

Clubby London Trading Scene Fostered Libor Rate-Fixing Scandal
By DAVID ENRICH and JEAN EAGLESHAM
LONDON—Neil Danziger’s trades for Royal Bank of Scotland Group RBS.LN -1.01% PLC generated rich commissions for the brokers who handled them.
In return, brokers at London’s Tullett Prebon TLPR.LN +0.04% PLC took Mr. Danziger to London strip clubs and spent long weekends with him in Las Vegas, according to people familiar with the relationship. Brokers at R.P. Martin Holdings Ltd., another London firm, gave him early access to lucrative trades, these people say.
jlne.ws/13P6PoG

Banks Feel Heat on Capital
Long-Term Debt Proposal Aims to Ensure Creditors Share in Cost of Failure
WASHINGTON—Federal regulators, concerned that large U.S. banks remain a risk to the financial system, are pushing very large banks to hold higher levels of capital.
jlne.ws/150LH3f

China’s most prominent financier launches $2bn fund
By Jamil Anderlini and Simon Rabinovitch in Beijing
FT
China’s most prominent and politically connected financier is raising a new $2bn fund for investments in China and abroad, according to people familiar with the matter.
jlne.ws/18eYnTd

Battle is on to make bonds more transparent
By Stephen Foley in New York, FT
A retail investor who gets her hands on an Apple bond can sleep pretty soundly. Not only can she be pretty sure the iPhone maker will be good for the interest payments. If she decides, at some point in the future, to sell the bond, she can be pretty sure there will be a ready buyer there to take it off her hands at the prevailing market price.
jlne.ws/13P8s5L

Trading houses take record sugar delivery
By Emiko Terazono in London, FT
Cargill, Wilmar and Bunge, three leading commodities trading houses, have taken delivery of the biggest amount of sugar on record from the main futures exchange for the sweetener.
jlne.ws/12rj2NY

MTS plans push into US bond trading
By Philip Stafford, FT
One of Europe’s largest electronic fixed income platforms is preparing a push into the US as it looks to tap rising demand from institutional investors for government and corporate bonds.
jlne.ws/16t4DaB

Diamond, in the Rough
By WILLIAM ALDEN, New York Times
Robert E. Diamond Jr., former chief executive of Barclays, has gone from being one of the highest-ranking and highest-paid bankers in Britain to a guy who takes the subway to an office in exile, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in an article for The New York Times Magazine. “It’s hard for me to talk about it,” Mr. Diamond said. “I’ve tried to move on.”
jlne.ws/ZXJxgp

Regulatory

SEC’s White: Investor Protection Key To JOBS Act
MarketWatch
WASHINGTON – The Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chairman, Mary Jo White, on Wednesday told a small business advisory panel that she wants to implement the JOBS Act – which seeks to ease access to capital for small businesses – by approving rules required by the law with a close eye on investor protection concerns.
jlne.ws/Ygf10I

SEC Proposes Rules for Cross-Border Security-Based Swap Activities
The Securities and Exchange Commission today voted unanimously to propose rules and interpretive guidance for parties to cross-border security-based swap transactions.
jlne.ws/17xWhMS

***WL: Kudos to the new SEC chair for getting unanimous approval for this crucially important proposal. Now the challenge will be to perform a gap analysis between the SEC’s proposed rule and the guidance issued by the CFTC.

Opening Statement At The SEC Open Meeting By SEC Chairman Mary Jo White
jlne.ws/YgeZpE

***WL: The new chair outlines her views on the “substituted compliance” approach to applying the SEC’s derivatives rules to cross-border transactions.

SEC Open Meeting: Opening Statement By SEC Commissioner Elisse B. Walter
jlne.ws/Ygf10L

Statement At Open Meeting To Propose Rules Regarding Cross-Border Security-Based Swap Activities By SEC Commissioner Troy A. Paredes
jlne.ws/Ygf10N

Working To Increase Transparency And Reduce Systemic Risks Caused By The Global Derivatives Market By CFTC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar
jlne.ws/Ygf1h2

Statement At SEC Open Meeting – Proposed Rules Relating To Cross-Border Security-Based Swap Activities By Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher
jlne.ws/Ygf1h3

CFTC’s Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight Issues No-Action Letter Regarding the Obligation of Swap Dealers and Major Swap Participants to Provide Certain Disclosures for Certain Transactions Under Regulation 23.431
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO) today issued a no-action letter that provides swap dealers and major swap participants with relief from certain disclosure requirements prescribed under Commission Regulation 23.431.
jlne.ws/YgeZpC

“TTF” – Keynote Address By CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton To The Energy Bar Association, Washington, DC
http://www.mondovisione.com/media-and-resources/news/ttf-keynote-address-by-cftc-commissioner-bart-chilton-to-the-energy-bar-asso/

SIFMA Statement On SEC Cross-Border Proposal
jlne.ws/YgeZpF

ASIC releases quarterly cash equity market data
jlne.ws/YgeZpG

MARKIT LAUNCHES CLO PRICING SERVICE
London and New York, NY – Markit, a leading, global financial information services company, today announced the launch of a new service for the pricing of collateralised loan obligation (CLO) tranches.
jlne.ws/15bFAcH

Exchanges & Trading Facilities

The Options Industry Council Announces April Options Volume Rose 16 Percent
The Options Industry Council announced today that 371,147,433 total options contracts were traded in April, which is up 16.11 percent compared to last year when 319,640,606 contracts were traded. This marks the best April volume on record.
jlne.ws/Ygf1h6

CBOE Holdings Reports April 2013 Trading Volume
CBOE Holdings, Inc. reported today that April trading volume for options contracts on Chicago Board Options Exchange and C2 Options Exchange and futures contracts on CBOE Futures Exchange, LLC totaled 102.70 million contracts. Average daily volume in April was 4.67 million contracts, up four percent from 4.49 million contracts in March 2013 and up one percent from 4.63 million contracts in April 2012.
jlne.ws/Ygf1h7

LME posts new monthly trading record
Record volumes were transacted on the London Metal Exchange (LME) in April 2013, with 14,517,213 lots traded. The previous record was set in November 2012, with 14,513,976 lots traded.
jlne.ws/YgeZFW

CBOE Holdings Declares Second Quarter 2013 Dividend
CBOE Holdings, Inc. announced today that its Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share of common stock payable on June 21, 2013, to stockholders of record at the close of business on May 31, 2013.
jlne.ws/Ygf1h9

Sluggish volumes hold back CME
By Neil Munshi in Chicago, FT
CME Group, the world’s largest futures exchange operator, reported a nearly 12 per cent drop in first-quarter net income as volumes growth remained sluggish.
jlne.ws/132lM88

CME Group Volume Averaged 11.6 Million Contracts per Day in April 2013, Up 8 Percent from April 2012
– Metals volume up 62 percent, to record
– Energy volume up 20 percent
– Foreign exchange volume up 18 percent
– Equities volume up 16 percent
CHICAGO, May 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today announced that April 2013 volume averaged 11.6 million contracts per day, up 8 percent compared with April 2012. Total volume for April 2013 was more than 254 million contracts, of which 87 percent was traded electronically.
jlne.ws/YgXXaK

IntercontinentalExchange profit falls ahead of NYSE Euronext deal
By Neil Munshi in Chicago and Philip Stafford in London, FT
IntercontinentalExchange, the US derivatives exchange, on Wednesday indicated it would look to push further into trading credit after clearing more than $300bn in derivatives in the past two months.
jlne.ws/YgWx0a

ICE Reports 18% Increase in April Daily Futures Volume
ATLANTA, May 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE: ICE), a leading operator of global markets and clearing houses, today reported futures volume for April 2013. ICE’s average daily volume (ADV) for futures and options was 3,843,846 contracts, an increase of 18% from the prior April. Total volume in April 2013 was 85 million contracts.
jlne.ws/120D8zY

London Stock Exchange Group Plc: Revised Offer For LCH.Clearnet Declared Wholly Unconditional
LCH.Clearnet Group Limited and London Stock Exchange Group plc today announce that the Revised Offer is wholly unconditional and will complete today.
jlne.ws/YgeZFY

Real Estate Sector Excels on Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange
Real estate was one of the most active sectors on Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange in 2012 and for the first quarter of 2013. So far in 2013, over $2.0 billion in equity capital has been raised and six IPOs have been completed in the sector.
jlne.ws/Ygf1hi

TSX Block List Leaders by Volume and by Values – April 2013
jlne.ws/cSTW6v

Direct Edge Trading Notice #13-18: EDGX Fee Schedule Change Effective May 1, 2013
jlne.ws/Ygf1xy

Hedge Funds & Managed Futures

Einhorn is gored by gold
New York Post
April was the cruelest month for the gold bugs in hedge-fund land, and the proof is just starting to trickle in. Gold is one of David Einhorn’s top six holdings; the billionaire even stores gold bullion in a secure site in Queens. But the downdraft in gold — which fell 8 percent for the month — put his Greenlight Capital fund in the red, down 0.6 percent.
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Bond Funds Running Low on…Bonds
JOE LIGHT – WSJ.com
The number of bond funds that own stocks has surged to its highest point in at least 18 years, another sign that typically conservative investors are taking bigger risks to boost returns. Regulators generally allow funds to hold a mix of assets, but the scale of bond funds’ shift into stocks is unusual, fund experts said, and could expose investors to unexpected losses.
jlne.ws/Ygf1xF

Ex-Rubicon CIOs Start Canosa Fund With as Much as $300 Million
Bloomberg
Tim Attias and Santiago Alarco, two former executives at Rubicon Fund Management LLP, raised as much as $300 million for their own hedge fund, almost a year after settling a lawsuit brought by their former employer, two people with knowledge of the talks said.
jlne.ws/YgeZG3

Kass, Berkshire’s Bear, is ready to “surprise” Buffett
Reuters via Yahoo! Finance
Hedge fund trader Doug Kass had his first brush with fame at the age of 10, when he appeared on a television quiz show, Tic-Tac-Dough, and won every day for a week. More than five decades later, Kass might find another sort of celebrity this Saturday when he will have the opportunity to quiz billionaire investor Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
jlne.ws/Ygf1xL

Investors Go Bananas for Apple Debt
MIKE CHERNEY – WSJ.com
Apple Inc.’s $17 billion of bonds are the shiny new toys of the debt market. Investors clamored to buy up bonds from the largest corporate debt deal ever on their first day of trading Wednesday, sending their prices up and making them the most popular to trade in the investment-grade bond market Wednesday. When bond prices rise, their yields fall.
jlne.ws/Ygf1xM

Rush for gold coins, jewels peters out
Reuters via Yahoo! Finance
Gold coins, jewellery and bars looked like a bargain after prices crashed more than $200 an ounce in two days last month, the steepest two-day plunge in more than 30 years. Shops reported an unprecedented surge in demand and mints and refineries were working overtime to keep up. But retailers say this enthusiasm, which helped push prices back up again, is faltering with some investors looking for another fall before they buy more.
jlne.ws/Ygf1xN

Federal Reserve Issues Federal Open Market Committee Statement
jlne.ws/Ygf1xP

Cash for Doomed Crops Means U.S. Farmers Avoid Disaster Cost
When dry weather destroyed Leonard McKissick’s soybeans last year, U.S. government-backed insurance paid him $40,000, the bulk of his loss.
Across the Arkansas Delta this spring, farmers such as McKissick are sowing fields that suffered the worst drought in more than half a century. Even though crops may fail again, landowners are shielded by taxpayers from the full burden of their bad bets.
jlne.ws/10Ynhq4

Centaurus to return clients’ money
By Sam Jones, FT Hedge Fund Correspondent
Centaurus Capital, the London-based hedge fund, is to return clients’ money after struggling to rebuild assets in the past few years, according to a person familiar with the company.
jlne.ws/11EBEut

SAC to Begin Clawing Back Compensation in Insider Trading Cases
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED, New York Times
As SAC Capital Advisers continues to face pressure over federal insider trading investigations, the hedge fund wants to assure investors that it is blameless.
jlne.ws/15bKdnb

Banks & Brokers

Knight swings to loss on merger, other costs
Market Watch
Knight Capital Group Inc. KCG on Wednesday reported a first-quarter loss of $9.4 million as restructuring costs and merger expenses weighed on the U.S. trading firm. Profits from Knight’s core business of trading shares with retail brokerage firms fell by around a fifth from a year earlier as it paid more to capture brokers’ stock orders.
jlne.ws/YgeZGa

Mining Woes Snag Financial Firms
ALISTAIR MACDONALD – WSJ.com
Far from any mine shaft, the legions of bankers, consultants and lawyers who benefited from a decadelong commodities boom are now preparing to retrench as the market weakens.
jlne.ws/YgeZGe

Goldman Sachs Completes Sale of Majority of Reinsurance Business
Bloomberg
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sold a majority stake in its reinsurance business to institutions and high-net worth clients as financial firms adjust to demands by regulators for more capital.
jlne.ws/Ygf1Oh

Goldman Names New Head of Special Situations Group
New York Times
Goldman Sachs has named Julian Salisbury to become head of its global special situations group, the elite division that invests in and lends to companies.
jlne.ws/YgeZWx

Glass Lewis Urges Vote Against Morgan Stanley Executive Pay Plan
Bloomberg
Morgan Stanley shareholders should vote against the bank’s executive pay plan in an advisory ballot this month, shareholder-advisory firm Glass Lewis & Co. said.
jlne.ws/YgeZWy

Deutsche Bank Warns of Failures Under Proposed U.S. Rules
Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank AG and other foreign banks with major U.S. operations say a Federal Reserve effort to force them to meet local capital standards puts them at greater risk of failure, and their regulators warn of reprisals.
jlne.ws/Ygf24B

Deutsche Bank’s Head of Rates Sales Sana Is Said to Be Leaving
Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank AG ’s global head of rates sales Haroon Sana is leaving the company, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Sana will depart his London-based role at Germany ’s biggest bank later this year, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak on the matter.
jlne.ws/YgeZWB

Deutsche Bank Hires Young Kim to Lead Energy and Power Equity Capital Markets in the Americas
Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance
Deutsche Bank today announced that Young Kim will join as a Managing Director in the Equity Capital Markets group responsible for the Energy and Power sector.
jlne.ws/Ygf24E

Britain’s Forgotten Ports Put Wind in Goldman’s Sails: Freight
by Kari Lundgren
Methil port north of Edinburgh, once the focus of Scotland’s coal exports, is set to tap a greener kind of energy as Samsung Heavy Industry Co. (010140) constructs the world’s biggest wind turbine in the town’s faded harbor.
jlne.ws/11Y4E26

British NGO challenges Goldman tax deal
LONDON (AP) – A British non-governmental organization is challenging what it calls a “sweetheart” tax deal between U.K. authorities and Goldman Sachs.
jlne.ws/ZXFH6Z

Mining Woes Snag Financial Firms
WSJ.com
TORONTO—Far from any mine shaft, the legions of bankers, consultants and lawyers who benefited from a decadelong commodities boom are now preparing to retrench as the market weakens.
jlne.ws/YgeZGe

Clearing & Settlement

OCC Announces Cleared Contract Volume Rose 17% In April
OCC announced that cleared contract volume for the month was 376,392,187 contracts, a 17 percent increase from April 2012. OCC’s year-to-date total contract volume is down half a percent from April 2012 with 1,383,287,827 contracts.
jlne.ws/YgeZWC

CME Group Clearing Advisory: U.S. Treasury Maturity Haircut Schedule Changes
jlne.ws/YgeZWH

CME Clearing – Performance Bond Requirements: Agricultural Inter-Commodity Spread Credits- Effective Thursday, May 2, 2013
jlne.ws/YgeZWJ

LCH.Clearnet starts €320m fundraising to meet capital needs
By Philip Stafford, FT
LCH.Clearnet has begun a €320m fundraising to meet new capital requirements for clearing houses, after confirming on Wednesday that the deal to sell a 57.8 per cent stake to the London Stock Exchange (LSE) had closed.
jlne.ws/Zpkxvi

Indexes & Products

Direxion Launches Two Leveraged Exchange-Traded Funds
jlne.ws/Ygf24I

Enforcement

NFA takes emergency enforcement action against Robert Juan Escobio, an associated person and principal of Southern Trust Securities, Inc., a futures firm located in Coral Gables, Florida
National Futures Association (NFA) announced today that it has taken an emergency enforcement action against Robert Juan Escobio (Escobio) an associated person (AP) and principal of Southern Trust Securities Inc. (ST Securities). ST Securities is an NFA Member introducing broker (IB) and commodity trading advisor (CTA) currently located in Coral Gables, Florida.
jlne.ws/Ygf24K

ADM sets $25m aside for corruption case
By Gregory Meyer in New York, FT
Archer Daniels Midland has set aside $25m for potential fines related to a longstanding foreign corruption probe, the company has revealed.
jlne.ws/ZpjQSJ

Environmental & Energy

Learning from Europe’s carbon price crash: we need a carbon bank
The Conversation blog
The dramatic fall in Europe’s carbon price in April led to claims emissions trading had failed as a model for addressing climate change. While the low EU price is problematic for the EU and Australia (by virtue of our linkage with the EU), carbon pricing is still the most efficient tool to address climate change at the scale required.
jlne.ws/YnvWkc

**RKB — Contributor is Katherine Lake, Research Associate at the Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law at University of Melbourne.

ETS, RIP?
The Economist
THE world’s largest carbon market has been holed below the water line. On April 16th the European Parliament voted to reject an attempt to bolster Europe’s flagship environmental programme, the Emissions Trading System (ETS). Carbon prices, already low, plunged. The emerging network of global carbon trading and European climate policy as a whole could sink.
jlne.ws/10WzNX8

**RKB — Editors repeat their belief that policy will shift to the national level.

Asia-Pacific

Once bitten, Japan’s big brokers play it safe amid Abenomics boom
Reuters via Yahoo! Finance
With losses from ill-fated expansions still fresh in their minds, executives at Daiwa Securities Group and other top Japanese brokerages are waiting to see if the “Abenomics” boost has staying power before they invest aggressively again.
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FIAJ has released newsletter May 2013 issue
Futures Industry Association of Japan has released May 2013 issue of its bimonthly newsletter. For browse, please access the following URL.
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Frontier Markets

Qatar Exchange: Liquidity Provision Activity Offers Various Advantages For The Market & Investors
Qatar Financial Markets Authority has approved the liquidity provision scheme that can be carried out by the financial services firms, which are members in Qatar Exchange. This scheme will enable these firms to submit constant quotes for the sale or purchase of a particular security to increase its liquidity as per the controls and conditions set forth in the Liquidity Provider Agreement.
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Dubai Financial Market Signs Memorandum Of Understanding With Awqaf & Minors Affairs Foundation
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Miscellaneous

McGraw-Hill changes name to McGraw Hill Financial
Associated Press via Yahoo! News
The McGraw-Hill Cos. said Wednesday that its shareholders approved a planned change of the company’s name to McGraw Hill Financial. The new name reflects the company’s increased focus on its financial business after recently completing the sale of its education business.
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What If All the Bitcoin Exchanges in the World Were Shut Down?
With this added layer of price discovery in the bitcoin’s existence as a currency, the possibility of scaling up to the multi-hundred billion valuations necessary to get it on the first rung of the global currency market becomes a possibility. Without it, we’re talking about beaver pelts.
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