Derivs - Equity

Structured products are set to arrive in Brazil, with recently passed legislation allowing foreign and local firms to structure and distribute to local investors. Regulators are hashing out the details on which type of products will be permitted and firms have started beefing up their operations.

Newedge is looking at the roles it might play once rules that follow the Dodd-Frank Act go into effect.

The European Union’s member states may press Deutsche Boerse to open up derivatives clearing to it’s competitors, according to a late draft of proposed EU rules now under discussion.

Republican lawmakers have warned the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission that the rush to develop regulations of the derivatives market by the July deadline could result in rules that are more sweeping than the Dodd-Frank Act intended.

Mutual fund firms are concerned about the possibility of being held responsible for reporting derivatives transactions with non-U.S. counterparties, according to Leigh Fraser, partner with Ropes & Gray.

Luxembourg Financial Products has structured a EUR250 million (USD352 million) delta-one note with fund of fund exposure for a German DAX 30 corporate pension scheme.

New regulations and developments including a central counterparty will make the over-the-counter derivatives and repo markets in Singapore more robust, Ng Nam Sin, assistant managing director at the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a speech yesterday.

Scott O’Malia, a member of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, warned that derivatives regulations being developed will fail if they are so rigid that they “create a market structure that fractures liquidity and creates an incentive to utilize dark pools, simply because our rules do not provide the flexibility necessary to facilitate on- exchange transactions.”

The American Benefits Council and the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets have expressed concern that a private derivatives regulatory group headed by the Federal Reserve may weaken regulations under the Dodd-Frank Act.

There are hints that the European Union member states may be pressing the E.U. to extend proposed regulations of the over-the-counter derivatives market to the entire derivatives sector.

The Brazilian over-the-counter derivatives market should change in order to allow for more creativity and innovation, especially in collateral management systems, according to Otavio Yazbek, commissioner at the Brazilian regulator Comissao de Valores Mobiliarios.

Jamzidi Khalid, ceo of Deutsche Bank’s international Islamic banking unit and head of Islamic structuring for Asia ex-Japan in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has left the firm, according to an official familiar with the departure.