As regulators seek to push more business onto exchanges and into central clearing, and to make derivatives and other markets more transparent and more resilient, the reform of the securities industry is well under way. What will regulations mean for businesses in practice?
New regulations, specifically the push towards central counterparty clearing, are having a huge impact on banks' over-the-counter foreign exchange operations. As the banking sector undergoes significant changes, what will this mean for banks' organisational structures and the foreign exchange market?
Last year, customer volumes overtook interbank volumes in the foreign exchange market for the first time. Electronic and high-frequency trading help to account for the change, as does the rise of retail participants – but regulatory change is also helping to cement this trend.
Unprecedented volatility on the foreign exchange markets has dramatically increased the currency-related risks for corporates and has forced them to re-evaluate their strategies for hedging against sudden shifts. Banks and software suppliers are developing tools to help them address the situation, writes Frances Maguire.
Much work has been done to standardise and automate fund processing, with several commercial solutions available, but the cost of processing fund transactions is still significantly higher than for bonds or equities and this is hampering critical mass. Is a more centralised market infrastructure needed to tackle processing costs? Writer Frances Maguire
The realisation of the Single Euro Payments Area has been dogged by delay and now, even before SEPA Direct Debit has launched, it looks to some as though the European Commission is moving the goalposts before mandating an end-date. Frances Maguire explores whether the industry can jump this final hurdle.
In the wake of the collapse of two major banks - Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns - global custodian banks are persuading increasingly wary hedge fund managers to consider placing some of their assets into their relatively safe hands, rather than risk placing everything with prime brokers. Writer Frances Maguire