Something for everybody today it seems from front to back across asset classes and the globe, as CCP politics rumble on and we have all manner of intriguing stories worthy of a scroll…
Public Markets
ICE Completes Acquisition Of Majority Stake In Holland Clearing House
ICE
ICE has completed its previously announced strategic investment in the Holland Clearing House, best known as clearer of TOM. ABN Amro Clearing has retained a minority interest.
With the addition of HCH, ICE operates six clearing houses, and intends to launch ICE Clear Singapore in March 2015, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals. ICE operates London-based ICE Clear Europe, HCH represents ICE’s first continental European-based clearing house.
BGC’s All Cash Offer Remains A Superior Proposal
MondoVisione
BGC Partners responded to the announcement by CME and GFI Group regarding their proposed transaction.
PLY: I am minded to wonder why CME think they will prevail with a hybrid offer at the same nominal level as the BGC all cash bid…or is this a precursor to a Gill-Lutnick pact to summarily carve up GFI?
Luxembourg Regulator To Fast-Track Approvals To Use China Stock Link
Michelle Price – Reuters
Europe’s main funds regulator has introduced a “fast-track” procedure for approving mutual funds that wish to participate in the Hong Kong China through train.
Yieldbroker’s Little Known Market Comes Of Age
Andrew White – The Australian
Yieldbroker, which last week welcomed the ASX on board as its biggest shareholder, has spent 15 years in relative obscurity as a bank-owned utility.
Users already turn over about $7 billion in bonds and derivatives a day on Yieldbroker’s markets, nearly double the turnover on the ASX’s best known market, equities.
LSE Expands SME Financing Scheme Across Europe (subscription)
Philip Georgiadis – Financial News
LSE ELITE expands beyond UK and Italy…
LSE press release here.
Dark-Pool Trading Sets Records In Europe As Rules Change
John Detrixhe – Bloomberg
PLY: EU still plans pointless complexity via volume caps in 2017 as part of the ongoing Commission message that Europe is anti investment.
Buyside Seeks Standards For Dark Pool Scrutiny (subscription)
Tim Cave – Financial News
The Investment Management Association, Europe’s largest buyside trade body, is in the early stages of an initiative to help dealing desks scrutinise the trading practices of their brokers.
PLY: Good but be more proactive still to help end users get a fairer deal through your intermediation.
Swaps Clearinghouses Need Greater Oversight, CFTC’s Wetjen Says
Silla Brush – Bloomberg
PLY: Hmmmmm more oversight & who is paying for that? Better to protect the waterfall and ensure clearing members are proactively managing the Counterparty risk of their clients to start with methinks. Stress tests in such fluid markets strike me as a rich trough for the leech consultancies but not much use to stop rapid tidal movements of collateral and exposure?
Private Markets
Meet The Man Making Japan An Oasis For Bitcoin Startups
Pavel Alpeyev & Jason Clenfield – Bloomberg
PLY: Mineyuki Fukuda the hero of the hour for Bitcoin regulation, in the land of the rising sun at least.
Special Section: FTI, NSEL, India at the Crossroads
PLY: MCX flat but FTIL has jumped 7%. No clear reason why but once again the information appears to be on the street without hitting the more transparent channels.
ED Attaches Assets Worth Rs 62 Crore (USD 10 Mln)
The Economic Times
Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached an assets estimated at Rs 62 crore (USD 10 mln) of a borrower company in connection with money laundering probe in the NSEL scam case.
The order, under Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) laws, has been issued against the firm Mohan India, which includes funds in bank accounts to the tune of Rs 59.53 crore (USD 9.7 mln) and a land plot in Delhi worth Rs 2.08 crore (USD 335k).
PLY: We need resolution. Can’t the ED and Mumbai fraud squad just auction these assets via the NSEL platform?
Technology
PLY: Following yesterday‘s outage and other recent events, concern from MAS has given vent to a modicum of managed fury it appears.
Latest Singapore Outage Adds Pressure On Exchange (subscription)
Gaurav Raghuvanshi & Jake Maxwell Watts – Wall Street Journal
PLY: Knives have been appreciably sharpened in recent days which must be an issue for the charismatic Magnus Bocker.
NYSE Hit By FTP Data Issues (subscription)
Waters Technology
NYSE first notified data subscribers by email at 10:05am ET, before reporting at 4:17pm that service was being restored…
New TMX Chief Focused On Better Data
Dana Flavelle – Toronto Star
PLY: I would worry Lou Eccleston could become typecast by discussing data not vision (especially when faced with looming competition from Aequitas) but he may be merely a victim of the media slant in this story of course.
Perseus Selected By Nasdaq For Time Stamping Service At US Data Center
MondoVisione
ITRS To Open New Research And Development Centre In Malaga, Spain
MondoVisione
ITRS Group is set to open a new R&D facility in Malaga’s Andalusian Technology Park in Spring 2015.
Products
DB1 Expands Eurex Analytics With New Options Liquidity Data
Automated Trader
DB1 press release here.
Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Launches Malaysian Bond Futures Product
malaymail
Bursa Malaysia Derivatives (BMD) launched the enhanced five-year Malaysian bond futures product (FMG5), on December 1.
Gujarat Farmers Ask FMC To Ban Castor Seed Futures
Dilip Kumar Jha – Business Standard
Faced with recent high volatility, farmers in Gujarat have urged FMC to ban futures trading in castor seed.
PLY: That India still indulges in such ludicrously elementary anti market discussion demonstrates precisely why the nation will struggle to achieve even a vestige of its potential.
Indexes
The Tel Aviv SE (TASE) BoD approved the launch of a new index – Tel Bond Non-linked, the eleventh Tel Bond index calculated by TASE. The new index will be launched on January 20th, 2015.
Career Paths
Calypso Establishes A Managed Service Centre In Dublin, With The Creation Of 150 Skilled Roles
MondoVisione
Calypso Technology is to establish a Managed Services Centre in Dublin with plans to create up to 150 skilled roles.
ESMA: Vacancy notice – Senior Officer – Investment Management
MondoVisione
Deadline: 14 January 2015. Please refer to our vacancy page for the details on this position (Ref. 2014/VAC32/AD7) and how to apply.
Financial Calendar
Friday
TMX $0.40 Q4 dividend payment
Record date LSEG 9.7 pence interim dividend
New announcement
ICE Q4 2014 Financial Results – Thursday, February 5, 2015
All forthcoming exchange / investment related events are now listed in our Events page.
Share Notes
Interactive Brokers CFO Paul Jonathan Brody sold 4,190 shares Monday, December 1st at an average price of $27.20 (bargain $113,968.00). Mr. Brody’s regular sales are chronicled on this specific page.
Crowdfunding
Early Investors To Make Big Gains On Lending Club IPO (subscription)
Tracy Alloway & Arash Massoudi – Financial Times
Wall Street names including Lawrence Summers, former US Treasury secretary, and John Mack, stand to make tens of millions of dollars when Lending Club lists on NYSE next week.
MarketInvoice, The U.K. Invoice Finance Marketplace, Raises £5M
Steve O’Hear – Tech Crunch
PLY: Encouraging news for the UK invoice finance leader.
P2P Lending Boost: Investors Allowed To Offset Loan Losses
Michelle McGagh – Citywire
The Autumn Statement has given a boost to P2P lending through changing a rule that will allow individuals to offset losses from bad loans against other P2P gains.
PLY: UK govt having maintained an element of Brown/Blair profligacy at least there was one vague vestige of common sense for the future of Finance in the mini budget yesterday.