Thank you to our SRP France 2023 sponsors and attendees last week! Keep an eye out for our coverage of the event, held in Paris on June 29.

Decrement or synthetic dividend overlays used in indices underlying structured products continue to grow and increase their market share across markets - especially in France - since early 2020 when the dividend crisis triggered by the Covid 19 first lockdown reverberated through the market.

The first decrement index seen on SRP’s database was the Euro iStoxx Equal Weight Constant (ECW) 50 Index, which replicates the Eurostoxx 50 Equal Weight Index while assuming a constant dividend of 50 points per year. The index was used as the underlying for Objectif Février 2015, which was issued by Société Générale in France during February 2015.

During the reporting period (2019-2022), Euronext, STOXX/Qontigo, Solactive, MSCI, and to a lesser extend S&P Dow Jones, were the main providers for decrement indices, with SGX, Bloomberg and Morningstar new entrants.

Euronext captured 64% of the market in 2019, when its decrement indices were used in 230 products that sold an estimated US$4.7 billion across eight jurisdictions, but mostly in France (207 products). The following years its sales volumes remained roughly the same, with the exception of 2022 (US$3.1 billion), although the company’s market share somewhat decreased due to the increased competition (2022: 14%).

Francesco Taglietti has joined the equity portfolio analytics team at global alternative investment management firm Millennium, in New York.

Taglietti joins the hedge fund company from Citi where he spent the last two years as head of equity derivatives data & risk analytics at Citi in London. He joined Citi in 2021 after three years at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. as executive director - equity exotics trading, also in London.

Lemuel Lee has been promoted to head of wealth management (WM) Hong Kong at BNP Paribas.

Lee was managing director, head of WM, Hong Kong markets. In his expanded role, Lee ‘will implement wealth management’s growth strategy while supporting a team of bankers to deliver solutions to clients in line with [BNPP’s] one-bank strategy,’ according to a spokesperson at the French bank.

Nagelmackers, Belgium’s oldest private bank (founded in 1747), collected €58.7m with its Fixed to Floating CMS Linked Coupon Callable Note 2028. The five-year, 100% protected steepener is the bank’s first public offer in Belgium since December 2021, and its first interest-linked structure since May 2019. The product pays a fixed annual coupon of 4.50% during the first three-years of investment. The remaining years, the annual coupon is equal to 1.5-times the difference between the 30-year EUR constant maturity swap rate and the five-year EUR CMS rate, subject to a minimum coupon of 0.70% pa.

The Hong Kong financial watchdog has released its FY22/23 annual report which highlights an increase of authorised ELIs and regulatory amendments in the derivatives market. The Securities Financial Commission (SFC) authorised 279 unlisted structured investment products (SIPs) during the year ended in March 2023, a 49.2% increase compared to the 187 structures in the prior-year period, according to the report.

The figure also represented a continued growth from FY20/21 where 146 unlisted SIPs were authorised in Hong Kong SAR, which are recorded on a ‘one product per key facts statement’ basis.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced the expansion of Project Guardian to 'test the potential of asset tokenisation across more financial asset classes'.

The regulator unveiled a new pilot phase for the asset and wealth management (AWM) segment of the market, which will focus on the issuance of multi-currency and debt, or equity linked structured notes, under HSBC’s existing issuance programme, which will be tokenised by Marketnode’s multi-asset issuance platform and distributed by United Overseas Bank (UOB) for its wealth management clients.

J.P. Morgan won the Best House, Asian Equities accolade at the SRP Apac Awards 2023 for its flow products traded on its Pyramid Evo platform that features smaller tickets. The J.P. Morgan platform caters to wealth managers, private banks, asset managers and distributors in Asia Pacific (Apac), specifically in Hong Kong SAR, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand, according to Vincent Ip, managing director, head of structured investments distributor marketing sales, Asia ex-Japan.

‘Evo’, short for ‘Evolution’, is an upgraded version of Pyramid. The bank’s internal platform capable of processing over 25,000 requests for pricings (RFQs) on Asian underlying stocks every day in addition to term sheet generation, trade execution and post-trade services.

Image: iStockphoto.