Derivs - Interest Rate

The Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority is holding firm on reducing structured products that it considers complex despite industry opposition to the regulator’s proposal.

High net-worth investors are no longer demanding certificate of deposit wrappers and/or principal protection on structured notes.

The International Swaps & Derivatives Association is recommending that the European Commission either amend or delete two sections of the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation that concern electronic trading and price sharing.

The European Securities and Markets Authority could still miss the end of September deadline for issuing technical standards for the European Market Infrastructure Regulation.

Standard Chartered is finalizing plans to launch a commodity trading unit in China. The launch will allow the firm to offer a greater number of hedging products as well as other additional services.

European antitrust regulators are investigating Libor-based interest rate derivatives and are looking at whether companies have breached E.U. cartel rules.

Eurex is to expand its dividend derivatives offering by launching ten new dividend futures on March 2.

Blake Schmidt, an executive director and interest rate options trader at Morgan Stanley in New York, has left the firm to join fixed income hedge fund Field Street Capital Management in a similar role.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore will not require foreign regulators seeking data from its trade repositories to provide indemnification against litigation.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has called for changes to plans by U.S. exchanges and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to revamp market-wide circuit breakers.

Alternative proposals in Europe for non-equity pre-trade transparency in the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II will be considered, although it is too early to say what form such rules will take, according to Markus Ferber, Member of the European Parliament, who is heading up MiFID for the Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

Religare Asset Management, the New Delhi-based asset management arm of Religare Enterprises, is planning to launch a close-ended debt fund that can use fixed-income derivatives, such as interest rate and forward rate swaps, to hedge interest rate risk.