Marex Financial Products enters the Nordics market, J.P. Morgan’s QIS business reaches US$100 billion notional while Asian market players share divergent views on market cap indices.
The first chapter of the SRP Index Report 2025 'Market Cap and Industry Sectors' has gone live ahead of the annual Europe conference in London this week.
SRP’s editorial team spoke with various market players on the current index trends and opportunities, with ISS-STOXX’s Armelle Loeb-Darcagne stressing the domination of market cap indices and the need for further education to grow the customised indices-linked products side.
FTSE Russell’s Gerald Toledano shared the market demand for sector indices and the increasing use of futures indices with more overlays, while Chris Taylor at Hilbert Investment Solutions discussed the shift towards custom strategies.
In Asia, Citic CLSA’s Julie He talked about a significant shift in customised index baskets and strategies in recent years against the backdrop of geopolitical tensions and macroeconomic uncertainty while Standard Chartered Bank’s Nicolas Rigois looked at index exchange-traded fund reference assets which have gained market share over the years.
In people moves, Barclays named Nick DeCock, former co-head of US equity derivatives flow sales at J.P. Morgan, as managing director, head of Americas flow derivatives sales while Citi’s multi-asset group appointed Sebastian Lutz as director in its sales team with a reporting line to Yinglu Zhang, managing director, head of North America sales for structured investments.
More appointments where seen in Hong Kong, where sell-side industry veteran Joey Tang joined Bank of Singapore, the private banking arm of the city state’s Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), as head of investment solutions group.
In the European market, the first ever issue of IDAD’s Callable Deposit Plan has delivered a record-breaking return to UK investors. The six-year product, for which Goldman Sachs International Bank was the deposit taker, achieved 62% growth over the investment term – the highest return on any UK structured deposit product for almost 10 years.
Marex Financial Products entered the Nordics market via a series of long-term initiatives. In addition to providing investors with a wide range of over-the-counter (OTC) capabilities and bespoke indices, the firm has also listed its first Marex issued products on Nordic Growth Market (NGM Exchange) through a collaboration with Strivo.
Turnover of structured products traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange reached CHF795m (US$904m) in February, down seven percent compared to January. Year-on-year (YoY) turnover remained stable, increasing by 2.2% (Feb 2024: CHF778m).
In the US fixed index annuity (FIA) market, the Invesco QQQ 15 Index has been made available to the Eagle Life Insurance Co’s Select Focus FIA series, adding to the tax-deferred annuity’s existing six index options.
J.P. Morgan says its quantitative investment strategy (QIS) business has reached the US$100 billion notional milestone. The US bank has US$40 billion in client assets on its separately managed account (SMA) platform Nexus of which US$25 billion sits in Nexus Prime, where institutional investors can get leveraged exposure to hedge fund strategies in synthetic format. The US bank has also reported a growing convergence between its proprietary index capabilities and SMA businesses.
Meanwhile, a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) arbitration panel has ordered Stifel to pay about US$132m in damages for allegedly misleading investors by recommending a structured note strategy as less risky than it was, as part of a series of legal actions against an embattled Miami-based broker Chuck A. Roberts.
In the Asia Pacific ex-China region, the Athena structure, also known as growth autocallables, saw its regional market sales soaring by nearly 37% YoY to an estimated US$11.3 billion in Q4 2024, SRP data shows.
The SRP China Market Review for February also shows that gold-linked issuances remain strong in the Chinese retail structured deposits market, while the CSI Smallcap 500 Index leads the index-linked category.
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