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Changes In The Composition Of The ATHEX Indices
January 12, 2011--Due to the transfer of trading of the shares of the company « VARDAS S.A. » to the Low Dispersion & Special Features Category of the Athens Exchange, the following changes will take place:
FTSE/ATHEX SmallCap-The shares of the company are removed from the index without replacement.
FTSE/ATHEX Market Index-The shares of the company are removed from the index without replacement.
FTSE/ATHEX Retail-The shares of the company are removed from the index without replacement.
All changes are effective from Thursday, January 13, 2011.
Eurex to launch equity options with weekly expirations for the first time
Launch set for 24 January 2011
January 12, 2011-The international derivatives exchange Eurex will introduce equity options with weekly expiration dates on 24 January 2011. This is the first time that weekly options on individual stocks will be available on Eurex.
. The Eurex Weekly Equity Options will be listed as separate contracts and will initially comprise derivatives based on shares of Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom and Nokia (four per underlying stock).
Eurex will offer Weekly Equity Options for the first, second, fourth and fifth Friday of a calendar month, complementing the standard equity options series, which expires on the third Friday of every month. All other contract specifications will correspond to those of Eurex’s existing equity options.
Weekly options have been available on the EURO STOXX 50 and DAX indices since April 2006. Their success with market participants is illustrated by their trading volumes: In 2010 more than 2.6 million contracts were traded.
State Street planning European ETF push
January 11, 2011--State Street Global Advisors is preparing to launch a range of new exchange traded funds in Europe, aiming to bolster its presence in a region where it has previously lagged behind some of its main competitors.
Although State Street is the second largest ETF provider in the US and worldwide, it is only the 20th biggest player in Europe, with assets of just $1.1bn at the end of December, according to BlackRock data.
Source beefs up staff to address challenges and opportunities in the European ETF market
January 11, 2011--Over the course of 2010, Source established itself as one of the main players in the European ETF market. It nearly doubled its assets by year end and saw over US$120 BN traded in its products throughout the year, making some of its products part of the most liquid ETFs in Europe. Source believes that further strong opportunities will develop in the European ETF market in 2011 and to maximise the benefit from those opportunities, it has made five senior appointments
Throughout the year, Source continued to broaden its product range, with a total of 24 new product launches in both its equities and alternative asset classes. In December Source further expanded its asset class footprint with the announcement of the PIMCO Source partnership, from which the PIMCO Source fixed income product range will be launched in early 2011.
In addition, Source increased the number of its employees by over 80% in 2010, reinforcing its position among the top Exchange Traded Product providers in Europe. Recently, the firm added five new directors to its distribution team, covering the UK, France, Nordics, fixed income and commodities:
NYSE Euronext European ETF activity highlights for December 2010
January 11, 2011--Listings:
Two new issuers joined our market in 2010 with ETFs based on NYX indices: Comstage ETF listed five ETFs based on CAC 40, CAC 40 Short, CAC 40 Leverage, PSI 20 and PSI 20 Leverage, while ESAF ETF listed one ETF based on the NYSE Euronext Iberian Index.
At the end of December, NYSE Euronext had 561 listings of 491 ETFs from 16 issuers. Compared to the end of 2009 ETF listings increased by 9.35% YOY; in 2010 there were 111 new ETF listings while 47 ETFs were delisted.
At the end of December, these ETFs covered 329 indices exposed to an extended range of assets and strategies (Equity, Fixed Income, Commodities, Short, Leverage, etc…), compared to 297 indices in 2009.
Trades & Turnover:
Both the average daily number of trades and average daily turnover figures again showed impressive YOY growth in December 2010:
On average, there were 7 250 trades on a daily basis, representing an increase of 19.4% versus 6 074 in December 2009.
Average daily turnover increased from €263.0 million in December 2009 to €333.5 million in December 2010, up 26.8%.
Total turnover in 2010 was €97.9 billion, up 27.3% from €76.9 billion in 2009. The total number of trades also showed very strong growth, increasing 23.5% from 1 837 880 trades in 2009 to 2 269 666 trades in 2010.
Average daily turnover for the entire year of 2010 was €379.3 million versus €300.3 million in 2009, or an increase of 26.3%. The average daily number of trades in 2010 saw a similar boost: 22.5%, growing from 7 179 in 2009 to 8 797 in 2010.
Assets Under Management:
At the end of December, the combined AUM of all ETFs listed on the NYSE Euronext European markets totaled €132.7 billion, an increase of 24.8% from the €106.3 billion at the end of December 2009.
Market Quality:
The combination of the flow of 23 first-class Liquidity Providers, competitive market makers, client orders and our high capacity, low latency technology contributed to a median spread of 34.2 bps of all listed ETFs.
At the end of December 2010, NYSE Euronext’s Liquidity Providers program featured 23 Liquidity Providers that had a total of 1122 liquidity provision agreements, providing firm bid/ask quotes with minimum size and maximum spread requirements for the entire trading session on all ETFs.
Visit www.euronext.com/etf for more info.
Twenty-Five Percent Discount On Initial Listing Fees On Istanbul Stock Exchange’s Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
January 11, 2011--Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) has decided to apply a discount on its Listing Fee Tariff in order to accelerate the efforts within the framework of its Initial Public Offering Campaign, to encourage public offerings to reach the European Union’s minimum free-float rate of 25 percent, and to facilitate reaching the target of “allowing companies to go public and increasing the free-float rate of traded companies” as envisaged by the Istanbul International Financial Center Action Plan.
As a result of such discount that has gone into force after being approved by the Capital Markets Board of Turkey (CMB) on December 29, 2010, a discount of 25 percent will be applied on the initial listing fees for the companies applying for initial listing/trading on the ISE National Market or the Second National Market, and whose free-float rate is minimum 25 percent or whose market capitalization is at least TL 100 million. Such discount will be valid until December 31, 2011 and shall not hold for annual listing fees.
Scoach leads the European market in 2010 as well
Europe’s largest certificate exchange reports consolidated trading volume of EUR 48.3 billion/number of structured products hits record high
January 11, 2011--Boasting a turnover of EUR 48.3 billion on its Zurich and Frankfurt trading platforms in 2010, Scoach remains the highest-volume exchange for structured products in Europe.
The number of trades executed last year at Scoach in Frankfurt rose to 2.5 million – an increase of over 7 percent compared to 2009. The volume of trades for international investors grew by 50 percent and accounts for more than 12 percent of total transactions. According to the exchange statistics published by the German Derivatives Association, Scoach has developed above-average in the German market over the past three years.
In 2010, the Swiss market posted a 7 percent increase in turnover to CHF 39.7 billion (EUR 30.1 billion). Asset managers and institutional clients in particular are making greater use of regulated exchange trading, which led to a record increase in listings of over 41 percent.
At end-2010, the number of listed products in the German market was 31 percent higher at 512,000. Currently more than 3,000 securities are admitted for trading each day.
LSE blames ‘human error’ for November outage
January 11, 2011--A two-hour outage that hit one of the London Stock Exchange’s trading platforms last November, delaying the implementation of an important technology upgrade, was caused by “human error”, the exchange has revealed after a two-month investigation.
The outcome of the probe stands in contrast to the exchange’s initial statement when the problem arose, which pointed to human error, possibly in “suspicious circumstances”.
Italian-German bond spread hits record
January 11, 2011-- The gap between the risk premium on Italian 10-year bonds and safe-bet German bonds hit a record 204 basis points on Tuesday, reflecting investor unease over the finances of some eurozone states.
But Italy also managed to raise seven billion euros in one-year bonds without any problems ahead of a bigger debt test later this week.
Tuesday's risk premium rate of 2.067 percent was only slightly higher than the rate of 2.014 percent in the last similar operation in December.
Britain thrashes out EU referendum plans
January 11, 2011--British lawmakers were to thrash out Tuesday the terms of a new law that could trigger a referendum on any EU treaty changes, with some eurosceptics insisting the plans do not go far enough.
A significant number of Prime Minister David Cameron's own Conservative MPs are prepared to rebel and vote against the European Union Bill, causing a headache for the coalition government.
They have submitted amendments which they hope will toughen up the bill and give the government no room to wriggle out of the referendum pledge.
