We review selected panel discussions of SRP Americas 2024 while awaiting to unveil the lineup of our inaugural Middle East conference to take place in Dubai.

SRP is going places with the first Derivia Intelligence Middle East 2024 scheduled for 20 November at Conrad Dubai. The conference which also marks the first collaboration between SRP and its sister company FOW will cater to the derivatives and structured products industry in the region.

The inaugural event will feature a series of sessions spanning macroeconomic environment, regulatory landscape, commodity markets, sustainable finance, digital assets, regional equity markets, role of Islamic finance, equity, foreign exchange (FX) and fixed income markets in addition to index innovation.

The conference comes on the heels of the 14th edition of SRP Americas 2024 which was held in a hybrid format in New Orleans, Louisiana from 10-12 September.

The first day of the event saw two-hour masterclasses. The session, delivered by Mayer Brown, focused on US federal income tax classification and treatment of structured notes.

“The tax law has clear cut rules about the taxation of debt, or the taxation of forward contracts, or options or swaps, but structured notes don’t really fall into any one of those categories,” said Remmelt Reigersman, partner, Northern California at the US law firm.

The second session led by counsel Brad Berman and partner Steffen Hemmerich revolved around regulatory and compliance issues concerning structured products, index providers, distributors and the use of social media.

Across the Atlantic, the European structured products association (Eusipa) reported increased structured products activity across European exchanges with €440 billion open interest and further turnover growth.

The UK market also continued to prosper with sales volumes and issuance levels in August among the highest in 2024 year-to-date. Some 77 publicly offered structured products worth an estimated £175m (US$231m) had strike dates in August, according to our exclusive UK Market Review, August 2024.

UK domestic distributor Tempo Structured Products made the headlines following the acquisition by Hilbert Investment Solutions for an undisclosed amount.

In Switzerland, the market remains in good health and has shown signs of changing dynamics in investor appetite for risk despite its dwindling momentum during the summer season.

In Belgium, the market is set to capitalise on new rollover money as banks increased their offerings to absorb the €22 billion government bond redemption. There were 48 structured products worth €365 (US$405m) issued on its primary market in Q2 2024, according to the latest data released by the Belgian Structured Investment Products Association (Belsipa).

In the Netherlands, Société Générale debuted a rabge of capital-protected certificates listed on Euronext Amsterdam comprising 72 uncapped certificates due between 15 November 2024 and 18 December 2026 and 125 capped certificates due between 28 October 2024 and 19 December 2025 with reference assets of single stock or single index.

In an analysis piece authored by Tim Mortimer at FVC, we discussed the aggregated risk of large portfolios and the value of Greeks analysis to provide relevant insight into trading distortions and opportunities that may not be immediately obvious by simply tracking issuance trends.

In the Asia Pacific region, HSBC got some attention as its linear zero-coupon notes became one of the best-sellers in Asia as the market expected the interest rate-cutting cycle to loom this year – this callable structure with three-to-five-year tenors were made available earlier this year.

The UK bank has been on a hiring spree over the last month with several senior additions to its structured products business, including Mohamed Yangui, who’s most recently appointed as global head of equities structuring based in London. He joined from Paris-based digital asset investments fintech company Trakx where he was head of structuring.

In the meantime, Singapore-based boutique asset manager Cornerpiece Capital Partners is readying the launch two actively managed certificates (AMCs) by the year-end featuring Asian ex-Japan equity strategy and global multi-asset strategy, respectively.

Based on SRP data, we also analysed single stock-linked barrier autocalls issued in Asia Pacific and the distance to their knock-in barrier levels to assess the impact of the market correction at the beginning of August.

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