The past week saw SRP report on a number of high profile moves in the Apac region while there was product news from BNPP, Scotiabank, HSBC, BBVA and C8 Technologies.
Etienne Grisey, managing director and head of equity derivatives structuring, Asia Pacific at BNP Paribas, relocated to Singapore from Hong Kong SAR to take up the newly created position of Apac head of global equities structuring.
In his new role, Grisey, who reports to Vincent Desmarest, will oversee all structuring teams under the global equities segment in Apac.
Médéric Gehl, director, head of delta one and retail solutions for Apac at Citibank, is another banker who relocated to Singapore from Hong Kong SAR with a spokesperson of the US bank citing ‘personal reasons’ behind his move. Gehl continues to report to Cyrille Troublaiewitch, co-head of equity derivatives distribution and multi-asset group for Apac based in Hong Kong SAR.
This certificate seeks to meet investor demand for high-quality ESG solutions, with the added benefit of equity factor weighting - Mattias Eriksson, C8
More Apac appointments were seen at HSBC Global Banking & Markets (GBM) where Patrick Boumalham was named global head of wealth sales, effective from 1 September.
Boumalham will add his new responsibilities to his existing role of head of wealth sales for Apac. He will continue to be based in Singapore and report to Allegra Berman, global head of institutional sales & co-head of securities services and to Sridhar Narayan, head of MSS for Asean.
The UK bank also tapped Wan Sze Loh as head of institutional sales, Asia Pacific. Wan Sze will take on full regional responsibility for sales across Asia Pacific. She will be based in Hong Kong SAR and report to Berman, and Monish Tahilramani, global head of emerging markets, Japan & Australia, Markets & Securities Services.
HSBC reported in its interim results that as of 30 June 2022, structured notes liabilities - designated at fair price – stood at US$8.4 billion and included US$6.6 billion in equity-linked notes, US$994m in FX-linked notes and US$823m in other structures. This compares to US$7.4 billion reported at year-end 2021.
In product news, BNP Paribas collaborated with Scotiabank in Mexico for the first ever Latam structured investments linked to custom MSCI indices. The French bank is providing derivative component on the underlying assets with Scotiabank packaging the notes with principal protection and a leverage exposure at maturity.
The new products provide an investment approach that seeks to identify long term, structural trends that could drive stock performance in a rapidly changing world, according to Florence Pourchet, head of CIB Latin America and CSR Americas at BNP Paribas.
The Credit Suisse Active World ESG Certificate is a private placement linked to equity names in the Morningstar Developed Markets Sustainability 200 Index, with weights from C8’s proprietary equity factor overlay.
“This certificate seeks to meet investor demand for high-quality ESG solutions, with the added benefit of equity factor weighting,” said Mattias Eriksson, co-founder and CEO, C8 Technologies.
The index universe comprises the 200 large-cap global companies with the highest ESG ratings, as researched by Morningstar Sustainalytics, an ESG research firm. Overlaid on this starting universe is C8’s proprietary factor-weighting methodology, which actively weights the stocks by 13 classic equity factors such as value, growth and quality.
“Equity factors target specific drivers of equity returns and, in this case, provides diversification relative to traditional market-cap weighted indices,” Eriksson said.
In Spain, BBVA has seen increased activity and volumes since the addition of a full credit catalogue to its automated structured notes platform.
The bank is carving its own space in the structured credit products market by bolstering its credit derivatives business and aligning its offering to capitalise on the risk profile of wealth management and private banking clients.
“The typical wealth management investor is wealthy – these investors hunt for yield and are somehow product and asset class agnostic,” said Regina Gil Hernandez, CFA global head of credit bonds, BBVA.
In part three of our performance analysis on the French market, SRP reviewed the outstanding structured products and looked whether there has been a risk for the invested capital during the most recent market low point in June this year.
The outcome was positive, with only six percent of the analysed products experiencing capital loss if they had matured at June’s market selloff.
Image credit: muratart/Adobe Stock Free Images