The structured products market has started the year with a number of high level appointments in the sell and buy-sides.

The past week kicked off with the appointment of Ed Reiley, head of capital markets at Merrill, effective from mid next month. Reiley will re-join the wealth management arm of Bank of America from Citi where he was head of wealth markets for the Americas.

Citi has posted his former position – the candidate is expected to manage a team of 40 across wealth and markets with a sole line of reporting to Andy Sieg, global head of wealth markets who re-joined from Merrill in September 2023.

InspereX, a US structured product wholesaler, has named Scott Mitchell its new CEO who was most recently co-head of global equity derivatives (EQD) sales & marketing during his 20 years at J.P. Morgan.

Ludovic Peiron is now the sole global head based in London following Mitchell’s departure at J.P. Morgan. 

Across the border, Meric Koksal, former managing director, deputy head of wealth solutions group and head of structuring at CIBC Capital Markets, has moved to the asset management group as head of product.

In Europe and Asia, Société Générale (SG) has lost two senior EQD sales executives within its global markets to HSBC and Nomura, respectively.

We also took a look back at some of the most relevant people moves in the structured product industry in 2024, spanning UBS, Unicredit, Vontobel, SG, Standard Chartered, Morgan Stanley, Natixis, Nomura, Leonteq and Marex.  

In terms of product launches, the Barclays Aries Index is now available in a suite of fixed index annuities (FIAs) to be issued by Delaware Life Insurance Co. The index offers exposure to stock as well as fixed income and targets 10% annual volatility with daily rebalancing.

In China, Standard Chartered Bank has rolled out its first tranche of retail structured deposits tracking the 30-year US treasury which is gaining traction in the current rate cutting cycle.

On the side of listed structured products, Austria saw its outstanding volumes of structured certificates for retail investors reach €15.6 billion in November – an all-time high, according to the latest figures released by the Austrian certificate association (Zertifikate Forum Austria or ZFA).

Meanwhile, the turnover of structured products on the SIX Swiss Exchange dropped 29% to CHF729m (US$795m) in December from a month ago when the CHF1 billion mark was exceeded for the first time since March 2023. Year-on-year (YoY) the turnover was up 32% (Dec 2023: CHF551m).

Some CHF688m was traded on exchange, down 18% month-on-month (MoM) while the comparatively small over-the-counter (OTC) business, at CHF41m, decreased by 78%. The average monthly turnover in 2024 stood at CHF737m, up 10.5% YoY (2023: CHF667m).

On the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), the average daily turnover for listed structured products – consisting of derivative warrants (DWs) and callable bull/bear contracts (CBBCs) – declined 27% to HK$11 billion (US$1.4 billion) in December month-on-month (MoM).

For the market reviews based on SRP, an estimated CHF5.96 billion (US$6.9 billion) was collected from 21,150 products that struck in Switzerland during November 2024, according to SRP data. Sales volumes were up 21% compared to November 2023 and fell by 15% MoM.

In Sweden, the estimated sales volume increased by 24% to SEK1.77 billion (US$158m) from 118 products in Q4 2024 quarter-on-quarter.

The structured note issuances in Taiwan boomed in Q4 2024 with equity-linked products dominating the market driven by high interest in the tech and semiconductor sector from retail investors. The issuances surged 86% to 12,089 YoY.

Structured products with a tenor of less than one year continued to dominate in the Asia Pacific (ex-China) region last year, accounting for over 72% of the market share in estimated sales, according to Spotlight on… Apac products investment terms in 2024.

Sales of structured products in Asia Pacific (ex-China) in 2024 rose nearly 14% compared to the prior year, reaching an estimated US$257.1 billion, SRP data shows.

Image: Andrii Yalanskyi/Adobe Stock.

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