Derivs - Interest Rate

Banks providing specialist derivatives that help private equity firms and companies hedge merger and acquisition and project finance risk enjoyed increasing demand for their products in 2018. But that boost in business flow means that the market has begun this year as an arena of intense competition between banks.

Banks providing specialist derivatives that help private equity firms and companies hedge merger and acquisition and project finance risk have enjoyed a year of increasing demand for their products. But this has been matched by intensifying competition between banks.

Vice-chairman of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation Larry Thompson has retired after 37 years working at the firm.

The European Central Bank has said that its swap arrangement with the Bank of England, which would help financial firms access liquidity in a foreign currency, would not be affected if the UK leaves the EU with no deal.

Nearly six years ago to the day the European Commission adopted the technical standards for the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) that, among other things, mandated the reporting of derivatives contracts to trade repositories.

The European Commission has finally confirmed that it will grant temporary equivalence to UK central counterparty clearing houses (CCPs) and central securities depositories (CSDs) in the event of a no deal Brexit.

European Union member states are set to soothe banks’ concerns about having too tight a window to change their risk-free euro reference rate from Eonia, with a postponement of the transition to Ester due on Wednesday.

The Bank for International Settlements has publish a research paper exploring the risks that spring from the close linkage between banks and clearing houses (CCPs) through OTC derivatives.

Financial markets are often seen as cold, calculating machines for making money. That is part of their function. But increasingly, people are talking of markets’ broader social purpose — that they exist to serve humanity and make its existence healthier and more sustainable. Toby Fildes argues that, 10 years on from the crisis, this new ethos will govern the markets’ future.

US swaps participants are emerging from a month of analysing proposed reforms of swap execution facilities (SEFs), with old fault lines opening up between institutions over how they think the rules will change the market landscape.

SEC chairman Jay Clayton warned the US Senate Committee on Banking about risks to US capital markets from Brexit, in a hearing conducted on Tuesday.

HSBC’s head of global markets Thibaut de Roux left the bank in September, following an accusation of inappropriate conduct from a junior female employee, according to reports from Bloomberg.