Latest: Barclays to buyback $17.6 billion notes mis-sold

The products were issued in excess of what it had registered on Form F-3 filed with the SEC on 23 May 2022. The UK bank expects to commence the proposed rescission offer on 1 August, which will be open till 12 September.

Additionally, Barclays plans to resume further issuances and sales by the bank and its affiliates of each series of iPath ETNs ETNs listed on NYSE Arca and CBoe BZX on August 1, which had been suspended since as early as 14 March. The issuer will make a further announcement of the date on which it plans to reopen each series of the suspended ETNs.

On 28 March, Barclays announced it expected a £450 million (US$591 million) loss and would delay a share buyback after mistakenly issuing the notes worth US$17.6 billion in total. It issued about US$36 billion of investment products after registering with US regulators in August 2019 to sell up to US$20.8 billion. The over-issuance error would require the firm to repurchase the affected securities under a so-called rescission offer at their original price, as SRP reported.

CSI 1000 grabs headline in China

Last Friday (22 July) was the first trading day of the newly-launched CSI 1000 futures and options on the China Financial Futures Exchange, the fifth listing of index derivative products in the country. The futures made up of four contracts delivered a traded volume of CNY50.5 billion (US$7.5 billion) while the options of CNY278.4m on the day.

‘In China's A-share market, retail and institutional investors have always been very interested in investing in small-cap stocks,’ Tommie Fang (right), head of China global markets at UBS, commented. ‘With the launch of this hedging tool I believe that overseas investors, including QFII (qualified foreign institutional investor) investors, will be significantly more interested in investing in domestic small-cap stocks, including hedge funds, quantitative funds, sovereign funds and university funds.

‘Against the backdrop of uncertainties in global capital markets such as macroeconomics, geopolitics and the epidemic this year, overseas investors are expected to strengthen their demand for domestic derivatives.’

Shanghai-headquartered Shenwan Hongyuan Securities today (26 July) announced that it would launch CSI 1000-linked structured notes with a snowball payoff on 27 July.

Solactive Future Energy ESG Index is now available

The German index provider on 19 July launched the Solactive Future Energy ESG Index, which is designed to represent securities that provide renewable energy or contribute to the value chain. Based on Solactive’s proprietary Natural Language Processing Engine ARTIS, the constituents are 59 companies active in solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, battery & energy storage, hydrogen power, and smart energy and alternative power.

This index is licensed among others by the German Asset Manager Deka Investment, according to Solactive.  

‘Our society is increasingly concerned about climate change and environment protection, with more people across the world willing to make sacrifices to address it,’ said Timo Pfeiffer (right), chief markets officer of Solactive. ‘Energy consumption and production play one of the most important roles in it as it is present in every activity of our daily lives. Therefore, the desire for clean energy sources has never been stronger.’

Multi-issuer platform Vizibility partners with Puente

The structured note platform, owned by Swiss investment solutions provider Capital Vision, has boarded Puente, a Latin American wealth manager. The partnership will allow Puente to quote and monitor their structured notes, ‘ensuring best execution, pricing, balance their portfolio among other benefits,’ according to Vizibility.

‘We will implement in record time a platform to analyze, compare, control and execute their Structured Products. All these improvements will translate in greater efficiency, productivity and transparency, providing the best execution in real time, risk control of the issuers and reducing operational risk,’ said Aurelien Vicar (right), managing director of Vizibility.

‘[Vizibility] will give us the opportunity to automate, control and scale our business at the same time to increase our productivity and revenues so we can spend more time in our customer experience,’ said Marcos Wentzel, managing partner of Puente.

The partnership comes after Miami-based Independent Broker-Dealerʼs Insigneo joined the force with Vizibility last month.

Main image: Engdao/Adobe Stock Free Image.