The French moves to expand its offering in South Korea; BBVA adds risk premia play to QIS range; Leonteq partners with China WM; and more.
Crédit Agricole has announced that its securities entity in South Korea has obtained an over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives brokerage licence from the country’s Financial Services Commission (FSC). Up until now, Crédit Agricole Securities (Asia) Ltd. (CASAL) activities were focused on the origination of foreign currency bonds for Korean issuers and on the distribution of capital protected investment products to investors.
The initiative serves as another key driver for our growth in Asia-Pacific, where South Korea has been one of our most active franchises - Jean-François Deroche
The new licence will enable CASAL further access to the local market and expand its product offering to a wide range of derivatives and derivative-linked notes, covering all types of underlying (rates, FX, equity, credit etc.).
This broadened product suite will better serve the needs of its Korean clients by supporting their diverse investment and hedging strategies, said Sungmin Joh, branch manager for CASAL.
‘This new development is a clear testimony to our Group’s trust in the Korean financial market, its resilience and its growth potential,’ said Gérald Massenet, senior country officer for South Korea, Crédit Agricole CIB and Crédit Agrciole Group.
Jean-François Deroche (pictured), senior regional officer for Asia-Pacific, Crédit Agricole CIB, said: ‘The initiative serves as another key driver for our growth in Asia-Pacific, where South Korea has been one of our most active franchises, both on the Global Markets and Financing fronts.’
BBVA rolls out QIS ‘SMART’ index
BBVA has launched an alternative risk premia index developed by its quantitative investment strategies (QIS) team.
The new long-only, rules-based dynamic strategy offers a diversified combination of asset classes across a number of geographies and has been designed to provide strong and stable returns in a variety of market scenarios.
The index overweights or underweights different asset classes based on assets trends.
‘Risk diversification is achieved by scaling the volatility of the index components and applying a risk control overlay that allows to keep overall volatility of the index close to the desired target,’ stated the bank.
‘[The new index] brings together the benefits of assets and regional diversification, a forward-looking risk indicator to assess of the market environment, a trend following mechanism to detect the best performing assets, and a risk budgeting to keep overall Index balanced,’ said Pablo Suarez (right), head of quantitative investment strategies at BBVA. ‘This combination allows BBVA SMART Index to deliver strong and stable returns in a variety of market conditions over time.’
Leonteq partners with China manager in cap prot healthcare play
Hywin Holdings, an independent wealth management service provider in China, Leonteq Securities and Arta TechFin, a hybrid fintech platform in traditional and digital assets, have partnered to launch a principal-protected structured product with 9% risk control mechanism linked to the FactSet Hywin Global Health Care Index (FHGHC).
The new capital-protected structure was hedged by Leonteq with Arta acting as a strategic distribution partner in Hong Kong and in the rest of Asia Pacific region via its partnership network of family offices and asset managers.
Inspired by Hywin’s healthcare insights and calculated using FactSet’s proprietary datasets, the FHGHC tracks more than 40 stocks selected from 19 stock exchanges across 36 sub-sectors of healthcare, with constituent companies such as GSK PLC, BAYER AG, Thermo Fisher, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Daiichi Sankyo, HCA Healthcare Inc, and other global healthcare firms.
The index represents a diversified and comprehensive benchmark of the global healthcare industry and enables global investors to better capture the investment opportunities in this space.
As of March 20, 2023, the index had achieved total returns of more than 66% in the previous three years, beating various global healthcare thematic indices compiled by S&P, MSCI, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq.
‘We expect such distributor-driven product issuances will continue to grow in Asia, as leading wealth managers seek to differentiate their proposition with truly bespoke product offerings for their clients,’ said Edward Ho (above right), head of Asia at Leonteq.”
‘Asian clients and investors increasingly favor healthcare as a highly investable mega-trend,’ said Nick Xiao, chief executive officer of Hywin International, the Hong Kong subsidiary of Hywin Holdings.
Numerix snaps rival pricing, analytics platform
Numerix has acquired Fincad, a leading analytics company in the pricing and risk analytics of financial derivatives and fixed income products, from Zafin, a provider of product and pricing SaaS solutions for global financial institutions.
Terms of the transaction are not disclosed. The combination of Numerix and Fincad brings together two of the industry’s most preeminent independent providers of analytics for the capital markets, including sell-side, buy-side, corporate and insurance market customers.
‘This combination is a game changer for the industry, allowing Numerix clients to use the most robust front-to-risk decision making software with their choice of best of breed analytics,” said Steven R. O’Hanlon (right), president and CEO of Numerix.
‘While both companies started at a similar point in time but took on servicing different segments of the market, it has become clear to me through the process that FINCAD shares a similar DNA to Numerix. This is a natural fit and I am very excited about the opportunities that lie ahead.’
‘Targeted acquisitions were a key part of our strategy when we invested in Numerix last year,’ said Scott Niehaus, director at Genstar Capital.
Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP served as legal counsel and Razorhorse Capital served as financial advisor to Numerix. Scotiabank served as financial advisor and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin served as legal counsel to Zafin.
Spectrum partners with ICE Data Services Italy
Pan-European trading venue for securitised derivatives Spectrum Markets has launched a collaboration with ICE Data Services Italy, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange, that will see Spectrum’s data provided to ICE Data Services Italy’s clients, as well as financial information and news websites.
The first phase of the collaboration will cover Spectrum’s reference data, with the potential for other data streams, like real-time market data, to follow.
The move further enhances Spectrum’s plug-and-play exchange infrastructure by offering an additional way to simplify connectivity for new members joining the venue, speeding up the onboarding process and reducing unnecessary costs.
‘Ever since we set out to offer a better way for retail investors to access markets, we’ve maintained a constant focus on enhancing and evolving our infrastructure and service offering, listening closely to what our customers want, and responding accordingly,’ said Nicky Maan (right), Spectrum Markets CEO.
ICE Data Services Italy collects, processes and standardises reference and business entity data, including corporate actions, risk analytics and taxation information, for several asset classes such as equities, listed and unlisted bonds, funds, derivatives and warrants/certificates.
The new data sharing collaboration will go live in Italy first, growing to include other regions across Europe in time.