Don’t forget SRP’s first report focusing on digital assets is live – go to the Report section of the website to find it.

We start this week’s roundup with an analysis courtesy of our new valuation tool. Some 99% of maturing products linked to the Eurostoxx Banks Index delivered a gain in the US market.

The Eurostoxx Banks Index has lost 24% of its value since the start of the year. With the help of the Structrpro.com tool, we analysed how structured products linked to the index performed in the US market. Our sample comprises 197 products, of which 92 are still live and 105 have matured.

Of the matured products, almost all (99.04%) have recorded a gain whereas for live products 84.79% are currently showing a loss. The total universe of US products is showing similar results with the proportion of products with gains much higher for the matured set than for the live products. There are less live products showing losses than for the Eurostoxx Banks, however, the annualised return figure at -5.08% is slightly worse than for live Eurostoxx Banks products which currently have a return per annum of -4.74%.

The highest number of products that redeemed early was seen in Q2 2021, when approximately 960 products autocalled

In Asia Pacific, Bank of America’s Arnaud Davoust has relocated to Singapore from Hong Kong SAR to take on a new role as head of Apac derivatives distribution and head of Singapore equities. Davoust will continue to report to Olivier Thiriet, head of Apac equities, in Hong Kong SAR, according to sources. Davoust joined BofA as managing director, Apac head of equity derivatives distribution in November 2019. His representative licence with Merrill Lynch Far East was terminated on 31 August 2022, according to Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).

In a first for the Chinese market, UBS Futures, the futures brokerage arm of UBS Securities in China, executed its first domestic commodity futures transactions for qualified foreign institutional investors (QFIIs) and RMB QFIIs (RQFIIs) on 11 October.

QFIIs and RQIFFs are inbound investment programmes, which enables qualified foreign institutional investors to gain direct access to trade A-shares, bonds and securities investment denominated in onshore Chinese yuan (CNY). QFIIs remit foreign currencies while QFIIs use offshore Chinese yuan (CNH).

Established in 2014, UBS Futures has been monitoring the opening of China's futures market, while leveraging UBS' network to target overseas clients since 2020, stated UBS. The trade follows the listing on 2 September of 23 types of commodity futures and 16 types of commodity options which are available to (R)QFIIs for trading at four other exchanges - the Shanghai Futures Exchange, Shanghai International Energy Exchange Center, Dalian Commodity Exchange, and Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange.

Another first in Apac has seen RHB Indonesia receive in early September a letter from the financial services authority granting permission for the first issuance of structured warrants in Indonesia. This letter marks the first issuance of structured warrant in Indonesia, with a total value of IDR20 trillion (£1.2 billion). For this issuance of the first ever structured warrant in Indonesia, Dentons HPRP actively assisted RHB Indonesia in the drafting of the base prospectus and term sheet used for the offering of the structured warrant.

Over in another active structured product market, France, an estimated 3,260 structured products were subject to early redemption between 1 January 2021 and 31 August 2022, according to SRP data.

The highest number of products that redeemed early was seen in Q2 2021, when approximately 960 products autocalled. Since then, the number of redemptions has gradually decreased with the lowest knockout rate encountered during the first two months of Q3 2022 when less than 80 products expired. The average products that autocalled was 469 per quarter with the average term to maturity 1.57-years.

Finally, in Germany, LBBW and Vontobel performed on 10 October the first automated issuance facilitated by Clearstream, Deutsche Börse’s post-trade service provider, via its new D7 - a fully digital instrument integrated within Clearstream’s global infrastructure which works as a connector between established networks and digital capabilities.

The launch of the digital instrument represents a milestone on the way to a fully digital market infrastructure in Germany, according to Markus Schenk, head issuance Europe, Vontobel.

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