We showcase some US activity highlights from our StructrPro platform, and look at main headlines from the global markets.

Bogdan Ianev has been appointed managing director, head of structuring, equity derivatives (EQD) at Mizuho Americas based in New York, according to a spokesperson at the Japanese bank. He reports to Arunesh Hari, head of EQD at Mizuho Americas, also based in New York.

Ianev is currently registered with Mizuho Securities USA, which is fully-owned by Mizuho Financial Group. From 2007 to 2023, he was affiliated with Credit Suisse Securities (USA), according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The structurer left the Swiss bank just before the 167-year-old bank was forced into a merger with its Swiss arch rival UBS mid-last month, leaving 8,500 live structured products on its paper to be transferred to the UBS books.

SRP data shows that the market share of callable structures in the US has increased by 250% since 2021

SRP has learned that another senior structurer based in Singapore also parted ways with CS not long before the UBS takeover was announced. In February, Clement Florentin left the Swiss bank after 15 years of service most recently as managing director.

Another major bank, Goldman Sachs, has made several changes to the senior management team in its equity trading division following the retirement of Joe Montesano, head of equity trading for the Americas, from the bank last month.

The bank has announced that partner and global head of exotics trading Dimitrios Nikolakopoulos has been appointed global head of equity structured products. Nikolakopoulos has spent the last 10 years at Goldman. Prior to that he was at J.P. Morgan Chase for 13 years where he held several senior roles in equity exotics & hybrids trading.

Jameson Schriber will head Americas delta one, adding this role to his current responsibilities as global head of one delta strats and engineering, and global co-head of equities derivatives and prime strats. Schriber joined the US investment bank is 2016.

SRP data shows that the market share of callable structures in the US has increased by 250% since 2021 when 268 callable structures worth US$4.6 billion (4.4% market share) were launched in the US market. The callable structure as a sole payoff type is on track to match last year’s issuance and sales with 318 products worth US$3.7 billion marketed YTD which represents a market share of 13.8% - the callable structure has also been used this year in combination with barrier rev convs (1,294 products worth US$4bn) and accrual and range (six products / US$32.9m) and spread (14 products/US$14.1m).

To illustrate issuer callables, we look at some performance statistics taken from the US structured product analysis service StructrPro.com. Click here to access the article.

Over in the Netherlands, Bufferfund has ceased to exist. The Dutch open-ended fund, which invested in bonus- and discount certificates listed in Germany, ended its activities on 31 March 2023, citing disappointing results in recent years and outflows from the fund as the main reason behind the decision. Since its inception in August 2016, the fund's strategy failed to deliver sufficient results and it was particularly unable to withstand the sharp fall in prices during the covid crisis at the beginning of 2020.

Gate.io, a crypto asset trading company, has launched Gate Wealth, a suite of solutions that was designed to provide wealth management services to global crypto investors.

The new solution offers a range of investment tools and structured products, including interval interest calculation, bilateral non-touch, snowball and quantification. It also provides customised products to meet user needs for income, asset protection and leverage ratios.

Valour Digital Securities, a Jersey-based securities issuer, has rolled out an EU-wide issuance platform for physically stored digital assets in the form of exchange-traded product (ETP) securities, the firm announced on 12 April. On April 5, the firm obtained all regulatory approvals by the Swedish and Jersey regulators. The new ETP products will be listed on regulated stock exchanges such as Deutsche Börse/Xetra in Frankfurt, Euronext in Paris and Amsterdam and SIX Swiss Exchange in Switzerland.

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