Deutsche Boerse expands its global network
February 21, 2012--As part of the planned introduction of the new Eurex trading system in December 2012, Deutsche Boerse Group will be gradually expanding its global network in the next few months. The financial centres of Amsterdam, Frankfurt/Main, London, Paris and Zurich will in future be linked via redundant 10 Gbps connections.
The links to other locations in Europe, the USA and Asia will be upgraded to 1 Gbps. The expansion project started in early February 2012 and should be completed in Q4 2012.
"After having successfully introduced our global trading infrastructure at our US options market International Securities Exchange, we are now taking the next logical step in Europe," said Michael Kuhn, Deutsche Börse AG’s Chief Information Officer. "Our global customers will benefit from the expansion of our high-speed network. At the same time we are laying the foundations for our company’s further growth."
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Source: Deutsche Boerse
Publication of an update to the Q&A on Money Market Funds
February 21, 2012--Two new Q&A have been added, Q15 and Q16. The purpose of this document is to promote common supervisory approaches and practices in the application of the guidelines on a Common Definition of European Money Market Funds developed by CESR by providing responses to questions posed by the general public and competent authorities.
The content of this document is aimed at competent authorities to ensure that in their supervisory activities their actions are converging along the lines of the responses adopted by ESMA.
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Source: ESMA
Alpcot Capital Management launches Europe's first actively managed equity ETF
Fund to offer investors the benefits of active management within an ETF structure
February 21, 2012--Alpcot Capital Management (Alpcot), a leading asset manager focused on investing in Eastern Europe, has today announced the launch of Europe's first actively managed equity ETF.
The physically-backed fund Alpcot Active Greater Russia aims to achieve long-term capital appreciation through investing in the securities of issuers based in the 'Greater Russia' region, i.e. Russia and other CIS region states. The Luxembourg-domiciled UCITS IV - compliant fund today lists its ETF Share Class on NASDAQ OMX in Stockholm, and is targeting retail and institutional investors locally, but is also open to professional investors across Europe. Alpcot Active is organised as an investment company registered under Part I of the Luxembourg law of 17 December 2010 on undertakings for collective investment.
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Source: Alpcot Capital Management
French Parliament to Vote on Financial-Transaction Tax, VAT
February 21, 2012--France's lower chamber of Parliament will probably today pass President Nicolas Sarkozy's bills to create a tax on financial transactions and to increase the country's main value-added tax to 21.2 percent.
The parliament in Paris will debate the two bills, which are part of a revised 2012 budget law, later today. The Senate is scheduled vote tomorrow. The increase in VAT, a sales tax, from 19.6 percent will be enacted in October.
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Source: Bloomberg Businessweek
Esma enlists regulators for commodities taskforce
February 20, 2012--The European Securities and Markets Authority has appointed two senior UK regulators to head up its newly created commodities task force, which will be tasked with managing the slew of regulations that are set to overhaul European commodity markets.
Last week, Esma revealed that it had appointed Martin Wheatley and David Lawton to head up its commodity task force at a meeting of its board of supervisors in November.
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Source: Financial News
LME says it has received several first-round bids
February 20, 2012--The London Metal Exchange (LME) has received a good number of first-round bids for the 130-year-old bourse, the world's largest metals market place, an LME spokesman said on Friday.
Separate sources familiar with the situation said the list includes NYSE/Euronext (NYX.N). Around half of the 15 or so parties that had shown interest in the LME had made initial offers.
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Source: Reuters
Tradition and Nomura launch Navesis-ETF, the first MTF that facilitates NAV-based trading of ETFs
New trading platform provides a more efficient and transparent way to trade
ETFs, referencing NAV
February 20, 2012--Navesis-ETF, the new fully electronic trading platform designed to enhance the way exchange traded funds (ETFs) are traded, launches today.
The platform is a joint venture
between Tradition, the global interdealer broker, and Nomura, the global investment bank and leading
market maker in ETFs.
In the rapidly evolving ETF environment, Navesis-ETF has been designed to increase transparency and efficiency, boost market liquidity, reduce costs and be fully regulatory-compliant. The platform will allow market participants, including institutional traders, sell-side banks and market makers, to engage in intraday and auction trading; referencing net asset value (NAV) prices in the ETF primary market, with cross asset class coverage, for the first time.
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Source: Nomura
Interview with Deborah Furh-ETF Radar Magazine
February 20, 2012--Deborah Fuhr, Independent ETF Strategist, talks about the latest industry trends, investor education as a never-ending process, arising challenges and her personal plans for 2012.
Debbie, in the last months one could read and hear a lot of transparency initiatives started by several ETF issuers. Was this (in some cases) just nice marketing or has the ETF industry already reached a deep and reliable level of transparency?
Daily transparency of the securities in an ETF has been of the Unique Selling Points, or USPs of ETFs since the launch of the first ETF the Toronto 35 Index Participation Units (TIPs) on March 9, 1990 – nearly twenty-two years ago – in Canada on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Providers of ETFs have been reacting since the financial crisis in 2008 to investors requests for greater transparency by providing details of swap counterparties and collateral for synthetic ETFs and more recently on securities lending activities including the average and maximum amount of securities on loan, collateral levels, composition, frequently-used counterparties and the net returns to the fund for physical ETFs.
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Source: etf Radar Magazine
12 new Commerzbank ETNs launched on Xetra
February 20, 2012--Twelve new exchange-traded notes (ETNs) issued by Commerzbank AG have been tradable on Xetra since Monday.
The twelve new exchange-traded notes track both the positive and the inverse performance of the benchmarks DJIA Index Futures, NASDAQ-100 Futures and S&P 500® Futures with a respective leverage factor of three or four.
The underlying indices are strategy indices which participate in the price movement of the reference entity and consist of a leverage component and an interest rate component.
ETNs are tradable notes that track the performance of underlying reference indices outside of the commodities sector and provide investors with access to additional asset classes.
Deutsche Börse’s ETN segment product range currently comprises 123 instruments. The monthly trading volume of ETNs on Xetra averages around €100 million.
view list of the new ETNs
Source: Deutsche Börse
Britons' financial fears ease as inflation dips to 3.6 pct
February 20, 2012--Britons are becoming less worried about their finances as inflation eases and employers look more prepared to raise wages, surveys showed on Monday, further fuelling hopes that consumers may lend the fragile economy some support this year.
The improvement in the Markit Household Finance Index survey adds to evidence that consumers are slowly regaining confidence, supporting the Bank of England’s view that consumption will start growing again this year. Mortgage lending rose and house prices picked up in January. Households reported the lowest degree of pessimism about future finances since April 2010, survey compiler Markit said. The measure of current finances, Markit’s Household Finance Index, rose to 38.7 in February from 36.4 in January, still well below the 50 mark separating improvement from deterioration but the least downbeat reading since December 2010. “These positive developments meant that debt levels stabilised and households’ appetite for major purchases moved back to levels not seen since the VAT (sales tax) rise in January 2011,” said Markit economist Tim Moore.
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Source: FT.com
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