Derivs - Equity

Investment banks have recently been selling complex derivative products, in large sizes, to unsuspecting widows and orphans.

Chris Concannon, president of BATS Global Markets, has been appointed as CEO replacing Joe Ratterman.

Jacques Aigrain, chairman of LCH.Clearnet Group Limited and LCH.Clearnet Ltd. based in London, is stepping down and will be succeeded by Lex Hoogduin, current board member who is based in Amsterdam.

Magnus Bocker, CEO of the Singapore Exchange will leave the firm at the end of June this year.

Hedge funds seeking alpha have been buying calls on technology and healthcare single stocks on the back of increased cash inflows and corporate share buybacks. This call buying has been hedged with puts on the S&P 500, according to traders.

The public dissemination of swap transaction trade data in Ontario is raising fears that trades will be linked to specific firms, thus influencing transaction pricing and making it difficult for firms to hedge their risk, according to lawyers.

Most equity indexes around the world are at or near multi-year highs, but you wouldn’t know it from the skew in index options.

Average pricing on orders executed on electronic trading venues could be the key to opening up a wider migration to central limit order books from the request-for-quote trading protocol, according to investors.

FTSE Group has launched an index that captures emerging markets, China A-shares and China N-shares that can be used to underlie structured products and other financial instruments.

The investment that a central counterparty must make in a guarantee fund, also known as skin in the game, does not protect the end client, as larger CCP contributions to default funds increase concentration risk and encourage moral hazard, according to CME Group.

Deutsche Börse has listed a new unit class of an actively managed exchange-traded fund issued by UBS which enables investors to participate in the performance of a multi-asset portfolio strategy with a euro currency hedge.

Relative value strategies such as dispersion trading are increasingly popular among European institutional investors searching for yield following the enhanced performance of equity last year.