A big day to kick off a big week. It’s the FESE (European Securities Exchange Federation) convention and yours truly is looking forward to being after dinner speaker Wednesday night.
In the meantime, big steps forward for RMB as a traded currency with a huge fillip for LME and overall the City of London thanks to a BoE directive signed by outgoing Governor Mervyn King. Listings are higher in London driven by a better stock market outlook (well at least before the Greenspan put expires) while we have an interesting interview with Magnus Bocker and a fascinating example of how the crowd itself spotted the dangers in a funding scam. There’s asteroid financing too.
LSE is looking at Brazil and Dublin/Malta must be delighted that their JV for wholesale debt has its first listing – so many stories, so much to say, scroll on:
Public Markets
HKEx, LME and Bank of China Limited (BOC) have signed an MOU on cooperation and the exchange of information regarding the clearing of Renminbi (RMB) commodity products.
PLY: Also congratulations to the Bank of England on signing an excellent deal for a swap line for RMB – the first with a major western nation which ought to help London become a leading haven for Renminbi trade…
London New Share Listings Revival Driven By Rising Markets
4-traders (press release)
PLY: Equities show sign of life, issuers appear in market…new share listings at four times the run rate for the equivalent period in 2012…
SGX & India: CEO Magnus Bocker
Economic Times
PLY: An interesting interview with Magnus Bocker and his various positions with Indian exchanges.
Ninemsn
PLY: Speculation continues that ASX have actually discovered a plan that might not be centred on cost cutting.
CME’s Terry Duffy On The Trade That Changed His Life
Crain’s Chicago Business
PLY: An interesting profile of Terry Duffy and his early problems in trading.
Minneapolis Grain Exchange Stands Apart
Minneapolis Star Tribune
PLY: MGeX, a unique independent possibility as an US exchange, especially with opportunity now writ large on its doorstep following the dissolution of the Canadian Wheat Board.
Private Markets
EWSM Announces Its Inaugural Listing
PLY: EWSM, a jv of the Irish SE and Malta, has its first listing. Congratulations to the team led by Gerard Scully who are building an EU market for wholesale debt products.
Treasury Strikes Nairobi Securities Exchange Ownership Deal With Brokers
Business Daily
The government will get a 10.2 per cent share of ownership of the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) in a deal that potentially settles a protracted tussle between stockbrokers and the State.
The 22 stockbrokers who mutually own the bourse will get a 4.08 per cent stake each or a total shareholding of 89.8 per cent, according to details of the agreement.
The deal paves the way for self-listing of the NSE; the last stage in a lengthy re-structuring process that was intended to separate ownership of the bourse from its management.
“Swift Transfer” Of Securities Between Dubai Financial Market And Kuwait Stock Exchange
Dubai Financial Market (DFM) agreed on new arrangements with the Kuwait Clearing Company to promptly transfer securities between the DFM and Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE).
Binary Option Brokers Bring In Bitcoin Trading
Finextra (press release)
Binary options brokers SetOption and TradeRush have begun offering trading in bitcoin.
PLY: Perhaps slightly counterintuitively, the derivatives products in Bitcoin may help stabilise it, as I have noted in my recent Bitcoin articles/presentations
Bangladeshi Expert Granted Permit To Set Up First Myanmar Commodity Exchange
Financial Express Bangladesh
The Directorate of Investment and Company Administration under the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development of the Government of Myanmar has granted a permit to launch Myanmar International Commodity Exchange Limited, an initiative by Bangladeshi expert on capital market Wali-ul-Maroof Matin.
Technology
London Stock Exchange Plots Brazilian Foray (subscription)
Financial News
The London Stock Exchange Group’s technology division MillenniumIT is looking to support a new trading platform in Brazil, as the exchange operator seeks to gain a foothold in the fast-growing Latin American market.
PLY: Roll up, roll up, the new proxy playground for the “Reign of Terror” outright competition in exchange markets is clearly Brazil. Those scheduled regulatory hearings in August look more exciting than ever.
CME Group Introduces Self-Match Prevention
The National Law Review
PLY: A wise attempt to prevent inadvertent error or market manipulation.
Japan Helps Myanmar Launch Its First Data Center
Eleven Myanmar
The modular Data Center will be constructed with the aid of Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd. (DIR) to power the first Myanmar Stock Exchange.
Products
Nasdaq OMX Nordic Launches Cash Settled Single Stock Futures
NASDAQ OMX is introducing Single Stock Futures cash settled on all underlying securities of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish single stock futures that are physically settled today.
ICE Certifies Brazilian Coffee For First Time As Futures Sink
Reuters
ICE Futures U.S. has certified coffee grown in top producer Brazil for the first time.
Meridian IPO To Raise €200m As Warsaw’s First CEE REIT (subscription)
Property Investor Europe
Dutch-registered Meridian Properties is launching an initial public offering on the Warsaw stock exchange as a Polish real estate investment trust to raise €200m.
Career Paths
Who Will Be The Next LME Chief? (subscription)
Financial Times
PLY: Mr Farchy is to be congratulated on a splendid summary of key candidates in the frame to run LME. Elsewhere LME management are notably voluble about wanting a rapid hire which clearly suggests the candidate ought to be internal or currently ex-gardening leave…
Stuttgart SE Supervisory Boards – Thomas Kölbl Co-Opted As New Member
Thomas Kölbl, Chief Financial Officer of Südzucker AG Mannheim/Ochsenfurt, was appointed to the Supervisory Board of EUWAX Aktiengesellschaft, a Boerse Stuttgart Group company, at its annual general meeting held on 20 June 2013. He replaces Horst Marschall, a former member of the Board of Managing Directors at BW-Bank, who has resigned.
PLY: All readers please note: EUWAX is the single greatest exchange in history, nobody in the English language speaking world has ever heard of. Seriously.
Crowdfunding
How The ‘Biggest Scam In Kickstarter History’ Almost Worked
Mashable
Rarely does a crowdfunding platform pull the plug on one of its projects.
But on Thursday, June 13, Kickstarter suspended all funding to a campaign called Kobe Red — just hours before the month-long endeavor was scheduled to close.
Operated by a group called Magnus Fun, Inc., the project claimed to have been raising money for a brand of Kobe beef-based jerky, made with 100% organic feed- and beer-fed Japanese cows. In just under four weeks, Magnus accumulated more than $120,000, close to 50 times its initial goal of $2,437. It had racked up a whopping 3,252 backers.
So why did Kickstarter suspend the entire project at the last minute? Evidently, the project was a scam.
Asteroid Miner Exceeds $1 million Crowd-Funding Goal
MINING.com
Asteroid miner Planetary Resources, the Seattle-based asteroid exploration company, reached its $1 million pledge goal to build a space telescope before the auto imposed deadline and it is now aiming even higher.
In the nine days left for the crowd-funding initiative, the company said it expects to double the initial goal to $2 million. On Friday morning, Planetary Resources had nearly $1.1 million and over 12,800 backers.
Other stories
Rufus Leonard Creates New Brand For LSE Group
Design Week
The consultancy says a global consistency and look and feel has been achieved under the new brand system, which uses a suite of visual elements including a redrawn coat of arms – the original of which was first issued in 1923.
CII Pushes NYSE, Nasdaq To Remove Zombie Directors
Pensions & Investments
The Council of Institutional Investors called on NYX and Nasdaq to force companies to remove so-called zombie directors, or those who fail to receive a majority of votes in uncontested elections but remain in their seats, according a CII statement Friday.
Rise of the Machines: How computers Took Over The Stock Market
Register
Trading used to be limited by how fast one human could shout at another and agree upon a price. Now it’s limited by the speed of an electron through copper wire. This has caused, to put it mildly, some changes.
In April 2013 bombs went off at the White House and Barack Obama was injured, the Associated Press reported. The news sent markets lurching downward with the Global Dow index losing 150 points (thereby wiping out $136bn in market value) before the AP announced that its Twitter account had been hacked – no bombs had gone off, Obama was fine. But that didn’t stop robotic trading algorithms from quickly selling off their holdings within seconds of the news.