I have just finished speaking to the amalgamated gathering of Ambassadors, entrepreneurs, business bigwigs and assorted wonderfolks at the Irish International Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Dublin. Great morning: a delight to not merely highlight investment opportunities in the New Europe but also have Bulgarian SE CEO Ivan Takev as my guest, thus providing an elegant segueway to the EBRD funded SEE Link which the Sofia bourse co founded with Zagreb and Macedonia.
More on CEE markets et al tomorrow, with the announcement of a great event coming to the parish in September.
As I rush to the airport where students with eager brains await me in Poland tomorrow, here’s today’s interesting parish news with pith, happy scrolling:
Public Markets
MondoVisione
Revenue $206m (USD 152m), up 3%, operating profit $103m (USD 76m), unchanged, net profit $89m (USD 66m), up 1%.
PLY: Flat to small up, as new SGX CEO gets to grips with his new strategy. Interesting times for SGX.
The US Giant Limbering Up To Scupper Germans’ Bid For LSE
Alex Brummer – Daily Mail
QV Premium: DB1-LSE Merger Brief.
PLY: Trans Atlanticism lives, Jeff Sprecher’s reputation has multiplied in the salons of London of late, largely thanks to his deft silence and the spectacularly inelegant outpourings of others…
China To Mull Shenzhen-Hong Kong Link Approval Before July
Bloomberg
Official approval and a starting date for the connect may be unveiled before July.
QV Premium: HKEx – SZSE Stock Connect and HKEx – SSE – Stock Connect Brief Part 4.
Bats Global Markets Announces Closing of IPO & Full Exercise Of Option To Purchase Additional Shares
Bats
Bats announced the closing of its IPO of 15,295,000 shares of common stock at IPO price of $19.00. The total includes 1,995,000 additional shares of common stock sold upon the exercise in full by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional shares.
QV Premium: Bats IPO Brief.
PLY: Well done to BATS and welcome to the listed end of the parish, this is good for the business and further proof that new entrants can succeed.
MOEX Change Tick Sizes From 4 May 2016
MondoVisione
CFTC
Private Markets
MondoVisione
Consolidated operating income of the LuxSE Group EUR 45m (USD 51m), up 5%, net profit EUR 12.6m (USD 14m), up 16%.
PLY: Good numbers from one of those listings rich environments nobody much talks about but which has found its niche.
Israeli Police Investigate Suspected £45m Diamond Fraud At World’s Largest Exchange
Peter Beaumont – The Guardian
According to initial reports, the value of the diamonds and cash involved in the alleged fraudulent activity at the Israel World Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv, could amount to up to $65m.
Dividend News
From FY2016 onwards, SGX’s dividend policy is to declare a base dividend of 5 cents per quarter, an increase of 1 cent. For each financial year, SGX will pay as dividend an amount which is no less than 80% of the annual net profit after tax or 20 cents, whichever is higher.
LuxSE dividend – unchanged compared to the previous year at EUR 60 (EUR 51 net).
Special Section: FTI, NSEL, India at the Crossroads
PLY: MCX up 2.5%, FTIL small off.
Technology
Blythe Masters Acquires Swiss Tech Firm To Strengthen Smart Contracts
Anthony Noto – NY Business Journal
Digital Asset Holdings (DAH) purchased Swiss technology firm Elevence Digital Finance AG, a technology firm behind the development of an “expressive language” that enables financial institutions to “model and execute with certainty and finality.”
With the acquisition, DAH has announced the launch of its own Digital Asset Modeling language (DAML), an alternative to the so-called “smart contracts” protocol, which self-executes contractual negotiations on the blockchain. The language DAH devised is specifically designed for financial services.
Details about the deal’s terms were not disclosed.
PLY: “DAM-L!” Hmmm, I have often experienced this feeling when programming but not clearly when yet using, well, DAML. Then again BlytheUX probably isn’t a good idea either, especially as the French would just deliver a soft pronunciation and make it sound like an elegant Normandy hamlet. Seriously, will DAH just buy all the tech through startup acquisitions? That seems to have been the approach to date… Interesting.
Thomson Reuters Enhances Liquidity Access For FX Market Participants With New Regional Data Centers
Thomson Reuters
Additional data centers in New York, London and Tokyo provide improved pricing, market access and workflow for FX market participants across the globe.
Products
SIX Swiss Exchange: Trading Commences On XBTR, A Bilateral Trading Platform For Structured Products
MondoVisione
PLY: I sense that the branding team went very very conservative at SIX, having suffered some embarrassment when I noted their structured product market “SCOACH” inferred “to steal with stealth” in some ‘urban environments.’
EBS BrokerTec Expands Its Successful NDF Offering With Launch Of New Instrument
ICAP
Financial Calendar
21.04 – I-Cham Breakfast, in Dublin, Ireland, Guest Speaker Patrick L Young discussing investment in CEE & SEE markets
- This event was terrific. Thanks to Tess, Glen & Mike Hogan for all their help putting this together.
New! 03.05 – ESMA Open Hearing On MAR Guidelines– announcement
All forthcoming exchange / investment related events are now listed in our Events page.
Other stories
Will Big Data Mining Prove A Top Sleuth For Investors? (subscription)
Financial Times
Banks, trading firms and regulators turn to novel technological solutions to detect accounting issues early.
PLY: Hardly new, it’s just the tools are getting easier and speedier… ask Mike Aikins, or think of Detica which sponsored Burgenstock back in the day.