Société Générale introduces new payoffs to investors in Asia, while cryptocurrency exchange OKX launches a snowball

Rany Moubarak has been named head of GM for the Middle East and Africa at Nomura, and reports to John Goff, head of GM, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea), according to an internal memo seen by SRP.

In this newly-created role, Moubarak is in charge of the Japanese bank’s client strategy for the region, as well as building local structuring, execution and product capabilities. He is also part of Nomura’s Emea GM Executive Committee.

‘The Middle East is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth, and is becoming a key financial hub for connecting markets East and West,’ said Goff in the memo.

OKX Snowball is a non-principal protected structured product for ‘professional and semi-professional investors who want to potentially maximize their earnings on a position while guarding against market movements’

Also in Asia, Société Générale (SG) won the Best House, Asia Pacific, Best House, Equities and Best Warrant Provider awards at the SRP Apac Awards 2023.
The bank said that the equity market correction, which was accompanied by an aggressive US dollar rates hiking policy to fight inflation, pushed Asian investors to explore new and alternative solutions to navigate these difficult market conditions. An increasing number of risk-off equity and fixed income solutions were designed to lock high interest rates, limit downside and seize any potential market recovery, according to SG. Specifically, capped floored floaters and curve-linked solutions were popular among its FIC offerings while put extinguisher, Darwin, switch-to-mono and silk hat payoffs demonstrated the pivot away from correlation in equity as part of the innovation brought by bank.

In other new news, cryptocurrency exchange OKX introduced the snowball, which ‘gives users the opportunity to realize returns while mitigating risk via a knock-in feature which provides a safety buffer if the market moves in the opposite direction’.

OKX Snowball is a non-principal protected structured product for ‘professional and semi-professional investors who want to potentially maximize their earnings on a position while guarding against market movements’. Denominated in USDT, the product is available in bullish or bearish strategies.

Looking at products, the income autocall is the most common product type overall in the US with the remaining income categories of fixed income and contingent income also contributing to the total number. Products in the contingent income category on StructrPro all have a fixed maturity with no autocall or issuer call opportunities. Most contingent income products are linked to more than one underlying and performance will typically be dependent on the worst performing of the basket to boost yield. For single asset products, the S&P 500 Index is the most popular underlying while for multi asset products, the most common underlying across products is the Russell 2000 index, followed by the S&P 500 in second place. Alternatives to major benchmark indices are ETF and single stock linked products although these make up a much smaller percentage. For more data, see the full article here.

Erste Group Bank has issued Sommerfloater 23-28 in Austria.

The five-year structured bond is 100% capital-protected and offers a variable coupon (paid quarterly) equal to the three-month Euribor – floored at a minimum of 3% pa and capped at 5.10% pa. The product struck on 30 June, and with a minimum subscription of €50,000 it is targeted at private banking and wealth management clients.

Erste started issuing plain vanilla fixed income bonds last year to accommodate investors looking for yields, which have been back in the Eurozone for some time now.

Finally, Banca Akros collected €34.1m with its Equity Protection Certificates on the Eurostoxx 50 in Italy. The four-year investment certificate pays a memory coupon of five percent per annum, providing the index closes at or above 85% of its initial level on any annual validation date. At maturity, the product returns 100% of the nominal invested.

For our latest coverage of the SRP Index report, Thematics, head here.

Image: Thomas Söllner/Adobe Stock.