It was a pleasure to attend the 25th anniversary of the Malta Stock Exchange last evening. On a splendidly balmy evening the Prime Minister and Finance Minister were guests of honour amongst a myriad of financiers celebrating. My thanks to Chairman Joe Portelli for his invitation, it was great to see many faces from Malta SE old and new.
Public Markets
DB1 Still Short Of Support For LSE Deal (subscription)
Financial Times
DB1 Secures 55% Shareholder Backing for LSE Deal
Will Hadfield & John Detrixhe – Bloomberg
…up from the 53% support the deal had at its last update, the company said in a statement on its website.
PLY: Oh dear, this is all looking a bit sad. The difficulty is that DB1, despite a small legion of investment bankers now being brought into the centralised model of the CEO, just looks plainly ill-suited to M&A. Dragging its own shareholders across the line is inevitable given the extent of intervention to ensure the rules fit what they can achieve but even then a simple binary question has highlighted the sheer inefficacy of the DB1, er, organisation. There are 202 days on our countdown to the point where the antitrust zone is likely to induce reality into the dreams of DB1.
QV Premium: DB1-LSE Merger Brief.
Latest Charles Li Direct: Brexit & HKEX’s Commodities Strategy For China
MondoVisione
CEO Li: HKEX To Put Planned LME-HK Clearing Link On Hold Due To Brexit
Michelle Price & Eric Onstad – Reuters
Other initiatives by the LME, however, should not be affected by the Brexit vote, Charles Li said in his personal blog published on Wednesday.
HKEX Announces Securities for First Phase of its Closing Auction
HKEX
BVB & Sibex Select Consultant For Possible Merger
Business Review
Bucharest SE (BVB) and Sibex appointed Deloitte Consultanta SRL as consultant that would evaluate the companies involved in the possible merger between BVB and Sibex.
QV Premium: BVB – SIBEX Merger Discussions.
Antitrust: EC Accepts Commitments By ISDA & Markit On CDS
MondoVisione
The European Commission has adopted a decision that renders legally binding commitments to licence inputs for credit default swaps, offered separately by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association Inc. (ISDA) and information service provider Markit.
MondoVisione
Special Section: FTI, NSEL, India at the Crossroads
PLY: MCX off 1%, FTIL up 1%, crackdown on Jignesh Shah and his companies seems to be continuing in full swing:
Bombay High Court Denies Interim Relief To FTIL On Asset Seizure
Jayshree P. Upadhyay – Livemint
The court declined to the company grant interim relief from the attachment of assets (reported yesterday). The matter is likely to be heard on 25 July.
‘Treat NSEL, FTIL As A Single Entity’
Ashish Rukhaiyar – The Hindu
NSEL and FTIL must be considered as a single business entity and FTIL’s objections to the merger are “orchestrated,” the Centre told the Mumbai High Court, as the government attempts to push through a merger of both the entities.
PLY: Still I cannot agree with the defenestration of the corporate code – there must be a settlement and if it involves seizing FTL assets, so be it.
Government: Merger With NSEL Will Not Burden FTIL
The Economic Times
The government has stated that its final order to merge scam-hit NSEL with its parent FTIL, does not presuppose any liability on the latter for defaults on the spot exchange that went belly up in July 2013.
PLY: I suspect the FTIL staff will see more of a presupposition in this…
QV Premium: NSEL Scandal Brief – Part 16 & NSEL-FTIL Merger Brief.
Technology
NCDEX Introduces E-Tagging Technology
Business Standard
RFID ensures that commodities stored in warehouses are tracked through radio signals.
Chinese Mining Giant Bitmain Acquihires Bitcoin Wallet Blocktrail
Avi Mizrahi – Finance Magnates
Bitmain will merge Blocktrail’s platform into BTC.com, China’s leading bitcoin block explorer service.
UK House of Commons Economic Affairs Committee Distributed Ledger Technologies
MondoVisione
Blockchain Unlikely To Solve Settlement Issues, Says Expert
Paul Walsh – The Trade
Career Paths
ICAP announced that Gil Mandelzis, CEO of EBS BrokerTec, has decided to step down from his position and will be leaving the company in due course.
FOW reports that Eris Exchange has hired former prop trader and Bloomberg Tradebook salesman, Mark Dziura, to lead its expansion plans for the prop community.
SEC announced that Kurt L. Gottschall has been named the Associate Regional Director for enforcement in the Denver office.
Bitcoin Evangelist Charlie Shrem Released from Prison
CCN
Bitcoin advocate and entrepreneur Charlie Shrem, the founder of bitcoin exchange BitInstant who was arrested in arrested and convicted in 2014 and held in a high-security federal prison camp since March 2015 has now been released from imprisonment.
MondoVisione
PLY: The Gulenist purges in the BIST management which began a few years back accelerate as a result of the military coup attempt last week. The parish problem is that once entities favour politics over productivity, it sends a message to the market. The Istanbul exchange is far from the only bourse under the suzerainty of an ‘activist’ government of course but that doesn’t reduce the likely operational impact of such wholesale changes.
Financial Calendar
21.07 – Adjourned WSE Ordinary General Meeting to resume proceedings
All forthcoming exchange / investment related events are now listed in our Events page.
Crowdfunding
City Regulator Warns On P2P Lending (subscription)
Financial Times
Other stories
ESMA Issues Public Statement On IFRS 15
MondoVisione
ASIC Consults On Proposed Guidance On Risk Management
MondoVisione