Forefront Fintech Digest Week in Review: January 23-27
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Broker News
BNY Mellon to Provide Outsourced Trading Solution to the Buy-Side
The TRADE News | Wesley Bray
BNY Mellon has announced a new outsourced trading offering for buy-side institutions globally, which it claims will provide opportunities for improved operational and strategic efficiencies, savings and expansion. The offering from BNY Mellon Capital Markets will be powered by xBK, the firm’s buy-side trading division, which executes over $1 trillion in volumes annually for its investment management franchise. The expanded outsourced trading offering will give clients the ability to reduce spending on data, trading infrastructure, analytics and reporting, as well as all associated trade execution support functions.
Banks Prepare for Deepest Job Cuts Since the Financial Crisis
Financial Times | Owen Walker & Katie Martin
Banks are gearing up for the biggest round of job cuts since the global financial crisis, as executives come under pressure to slash costs following a collapse in investment banking revenues. The lay-offs — which are expected to be in the tens of thousands across the sector — reverse the mass hirings banks made over the past few years and the reluctance to fire staff during the Covid-19 pandemic. “The job cuts that are coming are going to be super brutal,” said Lee Thacker, owner of financial services headhunting firm Silvermine Partners. “It’s a reset because they over-hired over the past two to three years.”
Morgan Stanley Hits Bankers with $1MN Penalties for Messaging Breaches
Financial Times | Arash Massoudi, Stephen Morris & Joshua Franklin
Morgan Stanley has hit bankers with financial penalties running up to more than $1mn per employee for conducting official business on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms.The forfeitures come as the bank tries to punish employees for a scandal that tarnished the group’s reputation and resulted in it paying $200mn of regulatory fines last year. Ranging from a few thousand dollars to more than $1mn per individual, the penalties are based on a points system that takes into account factors including the number of messages sent, the banker’s seniority, and whether they received prior warnings, said people briefed on the matter.
BofA Names 360 Managing Directors, With Focus on Diversity
Bloomberg News | Katherine Doherty & Kiel Porter
Bank of America Corp. named 360 managing directors, with more than half of the promotions awarded to women or people of color, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The appointments mark the third consecutive year that underrepresented groups made up the majority of the class, one of the people said, asking not to be identified discussing personnel matters. The executives were notified in recent days, according to the people. The company elevated 87 executives to the managing director level in its global corporate and investment-banking unit, according to an updated tally provided by the people.?
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Exchange, ATS & Clearing News
NYSE Mayhem Traced to a Staffer Who Left a Backup System Running
Bloomberg News | Katherine Doherty
More than 700 miles from Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange’s backup data center on Cermak Road in Chicago is supposed to safeguard US markets, standing by at all hours in case disaster ever strikes the world’s largest venue for trading shares. When markets are closed, it participates in a well-worn routine, with NYSE staffers turning on and off systems to ensure everything works. But heading into Tuesday, an NYSE employee failed to properly shut down Cermak’s disaster-recovery system — leading to a disaster.
Dubai Stock Exchange in Talks to Attract Dual Listings, CEO Says
Bloomberg News | Farah Elbahrawy, Archana Narayanan & Julia Fioretti
Dubai’s stock exchange is in talks with companies planning dual listings to attract both foreign and local investors, its chief executive officer said. The plan follows a booming year for initial public offerings in the Gulf in 2022, as investors flocked to a region that was growing even as listings elsewhere dried up under the weight of rising interest rates globally. “We have a number of stories that are looking at Dubai as a much better hub for them to attract regional and international investors,” CEO Hamed Ahmed Ali told reporters on the sidelines of the MENA IPO Summit held in Dubai.?
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Vendor News
Edgewater: New Hires and Opening of S?o Paulo Office Highlight Growing Demand for FX Trading Technology and Execution in Latin America and Globally?
Press Release | N/A
Edgewater Markets, a leading provider of technology, trade execution and liquidity aggregation across foreign exchange (FX) and precious metals, today announced extensive new hires and the opening of the firm’s S?o Paulo office as worldwide demand grows for its FX trading technology and execution services. Edgewater’s new S?o Paulo office, based in the largest financial market in the LatAm region, services financial institutions with white label solutions, customized technology and liquidity aggregation.?
Bloomberg LP Is Hiring 1,000 People While Other Media, Finance, and Tech Companies Slash Staff
Insider | Lucia Moses
Bloomberg LP is on a hiring tear while other media, finance, and tech companies slash staff amid the softening economy.?The financial news and info giant approved the hiring of 1,000 people this year, according to a staff memo from Vlad Kliatchko, the company's chief product officer, that was reviewed by Insider. He said many of the hires would be in data, product, and engineering. Other hires are expected to take place across the company, including news arm Bloomberg News. The company employs 21,000 people overall, including 7,000 engineers. Mike Bloomberg's software, data, and media company is known for hiring in downturns, an advantage of being a privately held company.
Large Language Models: Another AI Wave Has Come—What Could It Bring?
WatersTechnology | Nyela Graham
Steve Rubinow is no stranger to evolution in technology. He oversaw the changing landscape of exchange technology at the New York Stock Exchange as its chief innovation and technology officer in the 2000s and 2010s. He saw the dot.com boom up close and personal when he made the jump from a job at Fidelity Investments to get in on the ground level of Silicon Valley’s meteoric rise. Most importantly, he’s seen the potential in artificial intelligence technology before. “We’re in that mode, again, where there’s a lot of good stuff going on—you can’t dispute that,” he says. That good stuff includes ChatGPT, or Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, the chatbot that everyone seems to be talking about.?
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Buy-Side News
Lazard Appoints Blackrock Veteran as Head of North American Distribution
Hedgeweek | Staff
Lazard Asset Management (LAM) has appointed Jennifer Ryan as Managing Director and Head of North American Distribution, effective immediately. Based in New York, Ryan joins from BlackRock where she held leadership roles in both the firm's US and UK Institutional Client Businesses.?In her newly created position at LAM, Ryan reports to CEO Evan Russo. As a member of the senior leadership team for Lazard’s Asset Management business, she will be responsible for LAM’s business development in North America and will oversee its Institutional Client Group, Financial Institutions Group, Alternative Investments Sales, and Consultant Relations Group.
Hedge Funds Are Moving Towards Outsourced Strategies to Build Their Front-Office Technology, Finds New Research
The TRADE News | Wesley Bray
领英推荐
Systematic hedge funds are experiencing shifts in how they source and develop their front-office technology stacks, with outsourcing beginning to increase, according to new findings from Acuiti. Historically, systematic hedge funds placed high value on the development of trading strategies in-house, as this was used as a means to differentiate themselves from competitors. Hedge funds have often in the past preferred to avoid using third parties to build technology, primarily to protect their intellectual property and retain control of troubleshooting capabilities in cases where systems malfunction – a mindset that is still prevalent in the industry.
Inside Ken Griffin’s Rise to One of Wall Street’s Most Powerful People, and Why Politics Could Be Next
Insider | Dakin Campbell
"JB? JB and I are not on speaking terms these days," said Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, referring to JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois.?Griffin was wearing a light-blue dress shirt that wrinkled around his soft belly, suit pants, and untied black Oxfords. It was around 5:30 p.m. on a hot and humid Miami day last summer. I had come to a rented WeWork space 23 floors above the palm trees and million-dollar yachts to interview Griffin about his decision to relocate from Chicago. We'd spent two hours talking before I finally asked the question on everyone's minds: Was Griffin's move politically motivated??
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M&A / Investment News
FNZ Acquiring Bond Portfolio Management Tool YieldX
The Desk | Dan Barnes
FNZ, the wealth management platform, has agreed to acquire YieldX, the US-based provider of fixed income portfolio management technology, optimisation services and direct indexing tools for the wealth management industry. YieldX’s digital infrastructure and technology solutions will be integrated into FNZ’s wealth platform, helping clients to scan a universe of fixed-income opportunities globally, and identify outcomes that mirror their desired term and yield, based on their risk profile. The acquisition is hoped to support FNZ’s mission to deliver personalised investment solutions to in the wealth management industry, providing a wider range of investment options at scale to end investors.
Nasdaq Ventures Leads Financing in Due Diligence Platform
Markets Media | Staff
Diligend, the award-winning digital due diligence software company, today announced the rebrand of its company, now to be known as Dasseti. The rebrand comes alongside the successful close of its Series A Financing led by Nasdaq Ventures. Dasseti has demonstrated a very strong year-over-year growth trajectory since launch, adding some of the world’s leading institutional investors, consultants, and asset managers to its client portfolio over recent years. The partnership with Nasdaq Ventures enables the company to grow and support clients globally across the investment sector with innovative and unique solutions.
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Regulatory & Legal News
SEC Proposals to Overhaul Market Structure
Bloomberg Intelligence | Staff
Four sweeping SEC proposals to reduce tick sizes and access fees, and create an odd-lot best bid/offer; force marketable retail orders into competitive auctions; adopt a cross-asset class best-execution rule; and create execution quality disclosures for retail brokers would aid exchanges and hurt retail brokers if passed intact. The outlook for wholesalers is mixed, even though they’re a target. Retail investors trading liquid products will be aided, while others could get hurt. All the changes, except that governing disclosure of execution quality, likely face court challenges.
Bloomberg to Pay $5 Mln to Settle SEC Charges Related to Fixed-Income Valuations
Reuters | Chris Prentice
Bloomberg Finance LP has agreed to pay a $5 million fine to settle charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over "misleading" disclosures relating to its paid subscription service, the regulator said on Monday. Bloomberg failed to disclose to customers of its BVAL service that its daily price valuations for fixed-income securities could be based on a single data input from at least 2016 to October 2022, the SEC said in a statement. That practice did not adhere to methodologies the firm had previously disclosed, the agency said.
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Deutsche Bank Sued by Former Trader Cleared of Rigging Libor
Bloomberg News | Bob Van Voris
A former Deutsche Bank AG trader cleared of charges that he rigged the Libor benchmark rate is suing for malicious prosecution, becoming the second employee cleared in court to pursue the bank for damages. The trader, Gavin Black, and former colleague Matthew Connolly were convicted of wire fraud in 2018 for rigging Deutsche Bank’s Libor submission. The federal appeals court in New York cleared them last year, throwing out the convictions and prompting a suit by Connolly in November. Deutsche Bank denies it improperly set up Connolly for prosecution and has asked a judge in Manhattan to dismiss the suit.
A SupTech Transformation: Using Tech to Support the Full Supervisory Lifecycle
Central Banking | Regnology
Central banks are facing a big data problem. Amid rapid innovation and steadily increasing regulation across the financial landscape, the number of firms and disclosures they must supervise is increasing rapidly and is straining limited resources. Regulators have a constant incentive to demand additional information in reporting – the more timely and granular the data, the better they can spot vulnerabilities and detect critical risks, leading to more effective supervision. The logical extension of this desire for granularity is to entirely do away with time- and template-based reporting cycles, which provide only point-in-time snapshots, in favour of an automated data flow between regulators and the regulated.
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Crypto?& Digital Asset News
FTX Creditor List Features Netflix, Binance, Wall Street Journal
CoinDesk | Sandali Handagama
It's the list everyone has been waiting for, minus 9.7 million redacted customer names. But the 116-page FTX creditor list, which names companies including Netflix (NFLX) and Apple (AAPL), still paints a comprehensive picture of the failed crypto enterprise's reach and the impact of its collapse. Media companies, universities, airlines and charities, among others, appear on the list, a court filing from Wednesday shows. The document was filed by lawyers for the company as part of the bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Binance Acknowledges Storing User Funds With Collateral in Error
Bloomberg News | Emily Nicolle
Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest crypto platform, acknowledged that it mistakenly keeps collateral for some of the tokens it issues in the same wallet as exchange-customer funds.?Reserves for almost half of the 94 coins that Binance issues, known as Binance-peg tokens or “B-Tokens,” are currently stored in a single wallet called “Binance 8” which also holds customer assets, according to listings visible on its website on Monday. The wallet contains significantly more tokens in reserve than would be required for the amount of B-Tokens that Binance has issued, indicating that collateral is being mixed with customers’ coins rather than being stored separately, as has been done for other Binance-peg tokens according to the company’s own guidelines.
Jump Crypto President Unpacks the Industry’s Broken Capital Markets
The Block | Davis Quinton & Frank Chaparro
Since its beginnings as a skunkworks intern project in late 2015, Jump Crypto has developed a multifaceted crypto strategy that spans proprietary trading, venture investing, and infrastructure development. Although Jump had some exposure to FTX, the firm says it remains well capitalized. In this episode of The Scoop, Jump Crypto President Kanav Kariya reflects on lessons learned during 2022 and analyzes the current state of the industry's capital markets. According to Kariya, many crypto market participants struggled with proper collateral management over the course of last year.
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Realtor Associate @ Next Trend Realty LLC | HAR REALTOR, IRS Tax Preparer
2 年Thanks for posting.