This past week features a spotlight on the role of ETFs in the structured product market and new staff announcement at two major French banks.
Société Générale has appointed Hatem Mustapha as co-head of global markets activities and head of equities & equity derivatives, succeeding Alexandre Fleury in this position. Reporting to both Anne-Christine Champion and Fleury, who were appointed co-heads of global banking and investor solutions in March, Mustapha will work alongside Sylvain Cartier, co-head of global markets activities. Mustapha ’s replacement as head of global markets Americas will be announced in due course.
Under the new divisional structure Demetrio Salorio takes the role of head of global banking and advisory, succeeding Pierre Palmieri, who has been proposed to be appointed as group deputy chief executive officer. Salorio will report to both Champion and Fleury. Ilya Polyakov takes the role of deputy head of global banking and advisory, alongside Alvaro Huete who remains also deputy head of global banking and advisory. Both Polyakov and Huete will report to Salorio.
While some jurisdictions have implemented robust regulatory frameworks, in others this is less the case or not the case - Jean-Paul Servais, Iosco
Barclays has appointed Scott McDavid and Ronnie Wexler to run the global equities business which houses the bank’s structured products activities, and report to the bank’s co-heads of global markets Adeel Khan and Stephen Dainton. McDavid will join Barclays in September as global head of equities. Based in New York he will report to Khan. In this role, he will lead the global equities team and have oversight and responsibility for equities distribution and prime. He will also have a strategic focus on the bank’s platform complex. In addition to partnering with macro, credit and securitised products, McDavid will work in partnership with investment banking to drive progress across the CIB.
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (Iosco) has launched a consultation with recommendations to jurisdictions globally on how to regulate crypto assets. In an initiative designed to improve global standards of regulation of crypto assets, the regulator has set out how clients should be protected and how crypto trading should meet the standards that apply in public markets.
“The time has come for us to collectively address the regulatory oversight of crypto assets,” said Jean-Paul Servais (pictured), chairman of the Iosco board, speaking in London on 23 May.
“While some jurisdictions have implemented robust regulatory frameworks, in others this is less the case or not the case […] we need consistent regulatory standards to foster the functioning of global markets,” he said.
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are one of the top five asset classes for structured product market striking in the US market this year, writes FVC’s Suzi Hampson, for SRP. Ahead of them are various flavours of equities including indices, shares and share baskets, SRP data shows.
The most popular and widely used ETFs typically aim to track the performance of a benchmark index which is usually also used directly as a product underlying.
The largest ETF in US market is the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, designed to track the S&P 500 index, the most popular US underlying for structured products. The correlation between the two assets is over 99.9%, and the one-year historic volatilities of the two underlyings are very similar at 21.71% (ETF) and 21.49% (index).
Some product highlights in the SRP database feature HSBC Bank issuing 6个月美元盈转灵动产品002款第54期/6M USD Note S54 in China. The product has a knockout feature that is triggered monthly if the underlying DAX and Cac 40 both close at or above 102% of their starting level. If, at no time during the investment term, the worst performing index closes below 82% of its starting price, the product offers 100% capital return, plus a coupon of 5.1% pa. Otherwise, the return is equal to that of the worst performing index, subject to a minimum of 95% and a maximum of 100%.
In South Korea, Yuanta Securities launched My ELB 234 in South Korea. The capital protected bond is linked to the share of Tesla. It offers 100% of the rise in the share over the investment period. However, if the share trades above 140% of its initial level at any time during the one-year investment term, the capital return is 100%.
Image: Depositphotos.