Derivs - People and Markets

IHS Markit has integrated services offered by SmartDX, the capital markets division of Smart Communications, into its Counterparty Manager platform to automate documentation handling under the ISDA 2016 credit support annex (CSA) for variation margin.

Credit investors, whether in cash or synthetics, often welcome corporate restructurings by distressed firms. Job cuts, rationalisation of operations and, in particular, asset sales are usually regarded as bondholder-friendly actions.

The UK should not rely too heavily on EU law ‘equivalence’ preserving its dominance as a financial centre, bankers and lawyers have warned, after Bank of England governor Mark Carney suggested that use of the concept in Brexit negotiations could provide a template for a global regulatory system.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing will introduce a ‘volatility control mechanism’ next month for its derivatives market in a bid to stop trading errors and other incidents causing extreme price volatility.

TriOptima, the derivatives post-trade services firm, claims to have performed the first compression of client-cleared trades in its latest SwapClear cycle for Canadian dollar interest rate swaps.

JP Morgan’s head of CEEMEA credit trading has left his job, according to market sources.

Concerns that a ‘hard Brexit’ will lay waste to the pound and ratchet up UK inflation are furnishing a wave of innovation in structured products, as market participants look for more sophisticated ways to play a breakdown in previously dominant correlations between different asset classes, writes Dan Alderson.

There is no shortage of factors that have troubled market participants this year: Brexit; US monetary policy direction; fragility in European banks; oil prices. All of these issues, and others, have caused credit spreads to widen at various intervals in 2016.

Eurex and CME Group both lined up new futures contracts this week as the market assessed a generational shift from bilateral derivatives towards cleared, exchange traded products.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation has named the replacement for a departing senior official from its solutions and sales business.

CME Group is set to introduce six currency futures on its European exchange, taking the number of crosses it has available to 36.

A group of banks and service providers, led by New York based start-up Axoni, have completed a test of blockchain technology and smart contracts to manage affirmations and post-trade lifecycle processing for over-the-counter equity swaps, building on similar work done earlier this year for credit derivatives.