The Barclays Index business has been sold at last! DB1 is appointing a UBS banker to do venture deals (not sure where this leaves Brendan Bradley?), as Carsten Kengeter buys $5 million of DB1 stock – a shock outbreak of somebody buying their own market (rarely seen but I think he is on the right track). Paul Andrews (ex-FINRA) to head IOSCO as BATS lodges IPO paperwork for a second attempt. Meanwhile, ICE shareholder exit as IDC sellers take advantage of uptick to take their cash out…
Happy scrolling:
Public Markets
Bloomberg To Buy Barclays Index Business For $787 Million
Chad Bray – NY Times
Barclays said on Wednesday that it had agreed to sell its risk analytics and index solutions business to Bloomberg for GBP 520 million ($787 million).
The deal includes a variety of financial market indexes, including a family of bond indexes, and tools for analyzing and constructing financial portfolios.
QV Premium: Barclays Index Unit Sale Brief and Index Companies Deals Brief.
PLY: We started at barely six figure millions of pounds and the business goes out for five times that. Good number for Barclays (and on a week where nobody seems to have fined them – well there’s always Friday) but this underlines the valuations available for good index niches. MSCI and particularly Markit, can look cheap by comparison here methinks…
ICE Announces Secondary Offering By Selling Stockholders Related To Interactive Data Acquisition
ICE
Silver Lake Partners III, L.P., Silver Lake Technology Investors III, L.P., Warburg Pincus Private Equity X, L.P., Warburg Pincus X Partners, L.P., WP X Finance, L.P. and Igloo Co-Invest, LLC (collectively, the Selling Stockholders) intend to offer for sale in an underwritten secondary offering 5,669,002 shares of ICE’s common stock pursuant to ICE’s shelf registration statement filed with SEC. The closing price of ICE’s common stock on December 16, 2015, was $247.72 per share.
ICE has filed a registration statement (including a prospectus and prospectus supplement) with the SEC for the offering to which this communication relates. You may obtain these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at: www.sec.gov.
PLY: ICE stock barely moved on the news where it sits roughly around the same price as when the deal was announced. QV Premium: Exchange Deals Brief.
Suspension Of Trading In Euronext Shares
Euronext
Euronext is suspending trading in its own shares with effect from 9.00am CET this morning. This is a precautionary action pending a verdict that is to be received later this morning from the District Court of Rotterdam, The Netherlands in the appeal procedure between Euronext N.V. and Euronext Amsterdam N.V. and the Dutch Minister of Finance related to the consolidated capital requirements. Following an analysis of this verdict which may or may not be a final decision, Euronext will issue a statement after which trading will resume as soon as possible.
Nasdaq’s Friedman To Eye New Growth Paths (subscription)
Nicole Bullock – Financial Times
Her new responsibilities include identifying growth opportunities, making day-to-day business decisions and allocating the budget to the various business units.
“Our biggest opportunities are to capitalise on each of the businesses we have and make sure we are bringing them together appropriately,” Ms Friedman said.
She said the COO position (discussed yesterday) would allow her to look at Nasdaq in a “holistic way” to find the next avenues for growth.
PLY: The NASDAQ Bob will relinquish, apparently inevitably to Adena Friedman, is broadly unrecognisable from the business Greifeld himself inherited many moons ago. It will be interesting to see where she spots growth opportunities, as they abound in the current marketplace, albeit many are not at a scale NASDAQ can easily profit from.
LSEG
Esma’s Maijoor Calls For Swift Resolution To Mifid Uncertainty (subscription)
Jim Brunsden & Philip Stafford – Financial Times
Steven Maijoor, Chairman of Esma, has urged Brussels to move swiftly to set a new timetable for rolling out a landmark overhaul of trading rules after policymakers conceded that a planned January 2017 “Big Bang” is logistically impossible.
European Equity Trading & The Consequences Of Regulation
Hedgeweek
The debate over MiFID II has sparked intense speculation about the future of the European equity research business. Much less attention has been paid to the potentially profound impacts of the regulatory proposals on the European cash equity trading business.
China, Hong Kong Said To Announce Fund Approvals This Week
Bloomberg
China and Hong Kong regulators will announce approval of the first cross-border mutual funds as early as tomorrow, after the summer stock-market rout set back the start date.
CFTC
ESMA Publishes Updated CRA Q&A
MondoVisione
MOEX Supervisory Board Resolutions
MondoVisione
Private Markets
Bats Resurrects IPO Plan Three Years After A Botched Attempt
John Detrixhe & Annie Massa – Bloomberg
BATS Makes Second Attempt At IPO (subscription)
Nicole Bullock – Financial Times
A second attempt by BATS to go public is under way (previously discussed earlier this month) nearly four years after technical problems forced it to scrap its IPO.
In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, BATS said it will attempt to list on its own exchange where a software glitch caused shares to plunge moments after it started trading in 2012.
The exchange gave no firm details about the size of the offering. Shareholders, which include Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, are expected to sell stock in the listing.
PLY: Will the reduction in banker holdings change the outlook of a listed BATS?
Romania – BRM Licensed As Broker – Will Apply To Become An ATS (Romanian version)
Adina Ardeleanu – Bursa
Romanian FSA approved the request of Romanian Commodities Exchange (Bursa Romana de Marfuri – BRM) to be authorized as a financial investment services company, allowing it to start the process of becoming an ATS. BRM aims to offer agri and energy derivatives, allowing its spot market clients to hedge their portfolios and hopes to be authorized as an ATS in the next three-four months.
Japan To Consider Regulating Cybercurrency Exchanges After Mt. Gox Debacle
Japan Times
A working group under the Financial System Council has compiled a draft proposal on regulations for virtual currencies that are traded on the Internet.
Special Section: FTI, NSEL, India at the Crossroads
PLY: MCX up 1%, FTIL up 2%.
Technology
LME May Expand Electronic Warehouse Tracking System Beyond Metals
Eric Onstad – Reuters
LME will include ores and metal products in a new electronic system for tracking material stored outside its registered warehouses and may later expand to other commodities The exchange has kicked off testing of its LME Shield system, which it aims to roll out globally early next year.
Products
US Regulator Approves Derivatives Rules (subscription)
Joe Rennison – Financial Times
CFTC Adopts Scaled-Back Rule On Bank Safety (subscription)
Andrew Ackerman – Wall Street Journal
CFTC
24 Investment Management Firms Commit To Single-Name CDS Clearing
MondoVisione
BlackRock, Pimco Among Group To Begin Clearing Credit Swaps
John McCrank – Reuters
A group of 24 investment management firms, including BlackRock, Pimco and Eaton Vance, will begin clearing certain CDS in an effort to revive a flagging part of the market used to hedge risk.
Mifid II Misses The Mark On Fixed Income Research (subscription)
Tim Cave – Financial News
As if fixed income investing wasn’t hard enough, European regulators are about to make it a lot tougher.
Indexes
GPW Publishes The New RESPECT Index Portfolio
MondoVisione
Career Paths
As discussed yesterday, Adena Friedman was appointed COO at Nasdaq – press release.
FN reports that Ankur Kamalia, an ex-UBS banker, joined DB1 in November to oversee investments in young companies, in the newly-created role of global head of venture portfolio management, reporting directly to ex-UBS banker, Carsten Kengeter.
PLY: The continued centralisation of DB1 structure around ‘new’ CEO Carsten Kengeter continues. Ankur Kamalia taking control of the global venture portfolio effectively disintermediates Brendan Bradley from his position initiating and managing various stakes such as GMEX.
The Board of IOSCO appointed Paul P. Andrews as its new Secretary General. Mr. Andrews is currently the VP & Md of International at FINRA. He will take up his position at IOSCO for a three-year renewable term in March 2016. Prior to joining FINRA, Mr. Andrews spent eight years at the U.S. SEC. During that time, he worked in the Division of Market Regulation and the Office of the General Counsel.
Mr. Andrews succeeds David Wright, who joined IOSCO in March 2012 after 34 years of financial and regulatory policy work at the European Commission.
PLY: All the best to Paul Andrews and a fond farewell to David Wright whose impact on IOSCO has been enormous.
MOEX Supervisory Board approved an updated Policy on the Exchange Council and a 26-member composition of the Council. CEO of Otkritie Holding Ruben Aganbegyan was elected Chairman of the Exchange Council & Sergey Romanchuk, Head of FX & Money Market Operations at Metallinvestbank was elected Deputy Chairman.
The Supervisory Board also reappointed MOEX CFO Evgeny Fetisov as a member of Executive Board for a new term of office.
Speakerbus, the specialist provider of critical voice solutions for global financial markets, emergency and command infrastructure, appointed James Loeber as head of its new channel development strategy.
Pakistan Stock Exchanges Staff Losing Jobs
Salman Abduhu – The Nation
More than 160 stock exchange staff in Lahore and Islamabad will lose their jobs when the two bourses merge with Karachi later this month. 80% of 210 staff working at the two Punjab exchanges will be redundant despite commitment of management that there would be no job losses. The three bourses will be integrated into a single Pakistan Stock Exchange by December 28th when the Lahore and Islamabad operations will become branch offices.
QV Premium: Pakistan Exchanges Merger Brief.
Financial Calendar
18.12 – CBOE $0.23 quarterly cash dividend payment
New! 03.02.2016 – CBOE Q4 2015 Results (press release)
New! 04.03.2016 – LSEG preliminary results for the period ending 31 December 2015
All forthcoming exchange / investment related events are now listed in our Events page.
Share Notes
DB1 CEO Carsten Kengeter purchased 3 tranches of 20,000 shares each at €75 (bargain €4.5 million).
Other stories
Beijing Probes Architects Of Stock-Market Rescue (subscription)
Lingling Wei – Wall Street Journal
Having already investigated investors and brokerages in connection with a bungled summer stock-market rescue totaling more than $200 billion, Beijing is now probing the rescuers.
ESMA Sees Continued High Levels Of Risk In 2016 Financial Markets
MondoVisione
IOSCO Publishes Results Of The Third Annual Risk Outlook Survey
MondoVisione
Opening Statement Of CFTC Chairman Timothy Massad Before The Commission Open Meeting
MondoVisione
Statement Of CFTC Chairman Timothy Massad, Final Rule On Margin For Uncleared Swaps
MondoVisione
Statement Of CFTC Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo Regarding same
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Dissenting Statement Of CFTC Commissioner Sharon Y. Bowen Regarding same
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Concurring Statement Of CFTC Commissioner Sharon Y. Bowen Regarding same
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Statement Of CFTC Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo Regarding same
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