Derivs - People and Markets

Deutsche Boerse's new CEO, Theodor Weimer, said this week that, given the low market volatility of 2017, there were "headwinds" for the exchanges group, but that there was opportunity heading into 2018.

Chicago-based futures brokerage Rosenthal Collins Group on Tuesday announced that it had appointed Jason Manumaleuna president of the organisation, replacing industry veteran Maureen Downs, who left last December.

The Financial Conduct Authority on Tuesday called upon technology experts from across the finance industry to give feedback on a new automated way to provide the FCA with regulatory reports.

Christopher Giancarlo, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will visit European regulators in London, Brussels, Frankfurt and Madrid next week in an attempt to defuse European efforts to alter unilaterally the supervision regime for foreign clearing houses.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions on Tuesday urged its members to “improve the practices” of firms offering complex derivatives to retail clients as it opened a consultation on the matter to the public.

Electronic platform provider NEX has found a compromise between MiFID II, the new set of European regulations which require transparency of trading, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an upcoming European regulation which requires corporations to protect individual private data.

Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital on Monday revealed that it had set up an algorithmic trading unit to take advantage of volatility in financial markets.

China unveils plans to kick start RMB-denominated oil futures next month, the Philippines gets regulatory greenlight for its Panda bond issuance, and foreign ownership of bonds in the interbank bond market rises again in January.

The viability of short volatility strategies in derivatives markets was dealt a severe blow this week, after a historic spike in equity volatility torpedoed popular exchange traded notes. Costas Mourselas reports.

An exchange traded note that rewards investors when equity volatility drops is being shuttered by Credit Suisse, after implied volatility on the S&P 500 exploded this week.

EU Parliament rapporteur Danuta Hübner has written a draft report that emphasises the need to "mitigate the discretionary nature" of a draft plan that could force large non-European Union central counterparty clearing houses (CCPs) to relocate to inside the bloc.

After months of sensational growth, bitcoin has, at last, faltered. An increasingly hostile regulatory environment has caused its price, which nudged $20,000 in December, to collapse to around $9,000.