A review of this past week’s main headlines includes multiple staff moves at European banks, and a continuing global slowdown in activity.

The People Moves section of the SRP website has seen an uptick in activity in the past week. European banks, especially, have seen some staff movements, most recently Crédit Agricole Corporate & Investment Banking (CACIB) which welcomed a replacement for Samy Beji, its former as global head of structuring and product development, in London. The French bank has welcomed Aurélia Lamorre-Cargill in the role, a seasoned industry professional who previously worked at JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Barclays.

In related news, the head of Bank of East Asia’s (BEA) wealth management division has parted ways with the lender after three months on the job. Henry Pang was a senior private banking in Asia at BNP Paribas for over 16 years prior to joining BEA.

One of the most high-profile moves last in recent weeks has seen Stefan Armbruster, the former head of the Vontobel’s European operations in Frankfurt, re-emerging at online broker Flatex as new co-head B2C. The appointment comes at a time when the fintech group and online broker grows its flow structured product and cash equities platform. Armbruster will join on 1 May as managing director and member of the executive committee, based in Frankfurt.

Swiss structured investments provider Leonteq also made several headlines last week, announcing various partnerships and product launches globally.

Leonteq and Rand Merchant Bank, a division of South Africa’s FirstRand Bank, have reached an agreement to collaborate in the issuance and distribution of structured investment products. The lender will join Leonteq’s Lynqs platform as a white labelled issuer, and will leverage the Swiss firm’s platform to create and distribute structured products. Leonteq has also reached an agreement with PostFinance to cooperate in the field of structured investment products after a tender process.

The company has also issued a Barrier Express Certificate on a ‘worst of’ basket in Italy, distributed by Equita SIM. It pays a monthly coupon of 0.75% providing the shares of Fineco Bank, Intesa SanPaolo, and Unicredit close at or above 50% of their initial level on the valuation date.

Over in the US, fixed indexed annuity (FIA) sales have been caught in the volatility crossfire with assets invested in these structured retirement products dropping to $15.8 billion during the first quarter of 2020, a 12% drop on 2019 so far. While widespread market volatility resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic is said to be the main cause of the tumble, the decline in uptake has not only affected FIAs but also fixed annuity sales across the board.

An interview with Cboe Vest chief executive officer Karan Sood has revealed that target outcome investments, designed to offer investors exposure to a reference asset with a cap and a downside buffer limiting potential losses, are flying off the shelves. He revealed the company has seen "new sales year-to-date exceed $1 billion across all types of protection-oriented products…which include exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, unit investment trusts, and collective investment trusts”.  

Staying with the Covid-19 pandemic topic, oil prices may have recovered from huge recent losses but this might not be a rebound and could simply be markets taking a breather, analysts have warned. In South Korea, the country’s stock and securities exchange KRX suspended trading on exchange-traded notes (ETNs) linked to WTI Futures offered by Shinhan and Mirae Asset as they reached an excessive disparate ratio of over 30%. In the US, Credit Suisse broke the news to investors in its 3x Long Crude Oil ETNs that the intraday indicative value of the ETNs was equal to or less than zero on 21 April 2020, ‘and on all future days, will be zero’ and therefore they will likely suffer a complete loss of their investment.

Barclays also announced on 20 April that it will exercise its issuer call option and redeem in full its iPath Series B S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETNs which trade on the NYSE Arca exchange.