Derivs - Regulation

Wayne Smith, deputy head of markets and investment firms at L’Autorité des Marchés Financiers, and other European regulators are calling on the European Securities and Markets Authority to oversee trade repositories.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s new structured products unit is kicking off a wide-ranging search for fraud in the over-the-counter derivatives market, Kenneth Lench, the unit chief, told Derivatives Week.

Europe is zeroing in on taxing financial transactions, with specific reference to over-the-counter derivatives.

The Japanese Financial Services Agency is considering giving a future central counterparty clearing outfit the power to determine when credit default swaps referencing Japanese companies should be triggered.

South Korea is planning to have an automated database up and running by the middle of next month that will capture all onshore over-the-counter fx trading activity, the Financial Supervisory Service told Derivatives Week today.

A master agreement for entering into Shariah-compliant derivatives transactions is likely to be initiated in March, according to an official at Bahrain’s International Islamic Financial Market.

JPMorgan has reportedly decided to pick up its employees’ tab for the U.K. personal bonus tax--a move that will shrink its 2009 global bonus pool about 13% from what it would have been.

Metavante Corp., a swap counterparty to Lehman Brothers that was ordered to pay the estate in a closely watched court case in September, filed an appeal in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last week.

The credit event triggered by the debt restructuring of Japanese lender Aiful has prompted the International Swaps and Derivatives Association to introduce a protocol that will standardize certain provisions of legacy single name Japanese corporate credit default swaps.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, the financial messaging company headquartered in La Hulpe, Belgium, is working on a messaging system for collateral management issues.

Michel Barnier, EU internal market commissioner-designate, who will lead derivatives regulation in Europe, told European ministers in Brussels this afternoon that regulation of over-the-counter derivatives market will not be delayed if the U.S. and Asian authorities haven’t implemented similar regulation by year-end.

A handful of banks have been lobbying Indian regulators to open a retail equity derivatives warrants market. Some issuers who have been in nascent talks with the Securities Exchange Board of India include JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Scotland.