Prashant Panjwani, CFA,  Manager with the Business Consulting team at Publicis.Sapient explores.

The over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives post-trade processing and market infrastructure landscape has changed considerably since the first executed interest rate swap in 1981. However, despite some advances, the swap trade confirmation process still requires significant human intervention, highlighting the need for automation—and more specifically, robotic process automation (RPA).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has updated its Recommendation on the equivalence of confidentiality and professional secrecy regimes by adding three non-EU (third country) supervisory authorities to the current list of third country supervisory authorities whose confidentiality regimes can be regarded as equivalent.

ESMA has announced that the requirement for Investment Firms to report transactions only using Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI) will commence on the 3rd July, following a 6 month grace period announced shortly before the start of MiFID II (see here). In effect, this requires all relevant counterparties to have LEIs no matter where they are … Continue reading →

It is no secret that the City of London is a significant pillar of the UK economy. With financial services accounting for around 12% of the UK’s economic output, it generates more tax revenues than any other industry. It comes as no surprise then that the post-Brexit UK-EU relationship relating to financial services is a key

The European Parliament has agreed in a plenary session to the proposed changes  to EMIR as part of the REFIT process, passed by the ECON committee a few weeks ago (see here). The agreed document will be used to represent the stance of the Parliament in the “Trialogue” process in the coming weeks. The press … Continue reading →

Regulation and macro pressures are squeezing hedge fund profits. In this contributed article, Peter Rippon, CEO of OpenGamma describes the impact of capital and margin requirements, combined with rising interest rates and competition over investment fees, and explains why margin cost needs to be a front office consideration. 

The Monitoring Group has today published its Summary of Feedback of responses received to its earlier consultation Strengthening the Governance and Oversight of the International Audit-Related Standard-Setting Boards in the Public Interest.Responses to the M

Does Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) apply to me? If compliance and operations managers at US asset management firms are asking themselves that question, they are already in hot water. They should have started data mapping and amending their contracts with third-party service providers such as fund administrators and transfer agents, say data privacy […]

Yesterday was the 5 month anniversary of the start of MiFID II.  In many ways, things have settled down since then, although there have been some developments over the past weeks (see here for a list of these already covered). While all has been relatively quiet in the world of energy and commodities, there is … Continue reading →

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has formally adopted new measures on the provision of contracts for differences (CFDs) and binary options to retail investors.

The measures have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ). They will start to apply from 2 July 2018 for binary options and from 1 August 2018 for CFDs and will apply as follows:

1.    Binary Options (from 2 July 2018) – a prohibition on the marketing, distribution or sale of binary options to retail investors; and