Brussels Squares Up to UK in Fight Over Euro Swaps Clearing

By Philip Stafford and Jim Brunsden March 31, 2021, Financial Times The EU is gearing up for a campaign to seize greater control of one of the City of London’s most prized assets: its dominance over the clearing of...

New UK-EU Financial Services Pact Remains Weak on Market Access

By Huw Jones March 30, 2021, Reuters A financial services cooperation pact agreed by Britain and the European Union to enable regulators to share information foresees two meetings a year and stops short of any substantive reference to market...

City of London Should Not Blindly Adopt EU rules, Says BOE’s Brazier

By Rachel Armstrong and Huw Jones March 29, 2021, Reuters Britain should not be “short-sighted” and copy European Union rules just to keep financial activity in London, Bank of England executive director for financial stability Alex Brazier said on...

Bank of England Clamps Down on Brexit-Driven EU Relocations

By Stephen Morris and Caroline Binham March 29, 2021, Financial Times The Bank of England is demanding that lenders seek its approval before relocating UK jobs or operations to the EU, after becoming concerned that European regulators are asking...

BOE Flags Risk of Illiquidity in Fragile Government Bond Markets

By Lucy Meakin March 26, 2021, Bloomberg The Bank of England flagged instances of illiquidity as a broader risk to the financial system after a rout in some government bond markets pushed yields higher.The comments in a routine assessment...

COVID-19, MiFID II Accelerate Electronic Bond Trading Push

By Natasha Teja March 29, 2021, IFLR Jennifer Keser, head of regulation and market structure at Tradeweb, agreed with Masset. “COVID-19 this past year has been another factor that has propelled/increased electronic trading across certain asset classes where electronification...

ESMA Dithers Over Mandatory LEIs for Repo Collateral

By Samuel Wilkes March 26, 2021, Risk Repo and securities lending participants are currently living with a veiled threat issued by the European Union’s markets regulator. If carried out, the threat would prevent traders from using securities collateral...

SEC Denies Exchanges Stay on Market Data Rule

By Hazel Bradford March 29, 2021, Pensions&Investments The Securities and Exchange Commission denied a bid by U.S. stock exchanges to stay its new rule on market data infrastructure. A March 24 order denying the stay posted on the agency website said...

Bank of England Acts to Limit Fallout From Banking Glitches

By Huw Jones March 29, 2021, Reuters Banks and other financial firms in Britain must set out by March 2022 how quickly critical parts of their business could recover from IT glitches and other disruptions and how to minimize...

Wall Street Banks Summoned by Regulators Over Hwang’s Blowup

By Jesse Westbrook, Sridhar Natarajan, and Matt Robinson March 29, 2021, Bloomberg Wall Street banks grappling with the implosion of Bill Hwang’s investment firm spent Monday briefing US regulators as Washington starts to dig into one of the biggest...

Deutsche Bank Avoids Archegos Loss After Slow Hedge Fund Exit

By Steven Arons, Donal Griffin, and Alexandre Rajbhandari March 29, 2021, Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG has “significantly de-risked” its exposure to Archegos Capital Management without incurring any losses, avoiding taking a major hit on a business it agreed to exit...

Credit Suisse and Nomura Warn of Losses After Archegos-Linked Sell-Off

By Leo Lewis, Tabby Kinder, and Owen Walker March 29, 2021, Financial Times Nomura and Credit Suisse have warned of large losses after a fire sale of about $20bn of Chinese and US stocks as their client Archegos Capital...

How Bill Hwang Got Back Into Banks’ Good Books — Then Blew Them Up

By Tabby Kinder and Leo Lewis March 29, 2021, Financial Times In 2012, New York-based hedge fund Tiger Asia Management pleaded guilty to using inside information to trade Chinese bank stocks, resulting in a massive settlement with US regulators....

Britain and EU Strike Financial Services Cooperation Pact

By Huw Jones March 26, 2021, Reuters Britain and the European Union agreed a new post-Brexit financial services pact on Friday that will allow them to co-operate on regulation but does little to improve the City of London’s...

UK and EU Begin Diverging on Financial Regulation After Brexit

By Philip Stafford March 26, 2021, Financial Times The UK and EU have already begun to diverge in the way they oversee financial markets as hopes the two will reach a broad agreement on supervisory “equivalence” in the...

EU Plots New Money Market Rules After Virus-Induced Ructions

By Chris Flood March 26, 2021, Financial Times The EU’s top financial regulator has proposed sweeping reforms to safeguard the continent’s €1.4tn money market fund sector, which only narrowly avoided a crisis at the height of the pandemic last year....

Industry Group Backs Wider Use of Term Sonia in Derivatives

By Helen Bartholomew March 26, 2021, Risk Forward-looking term Sonia rates should be available for use in derivatives that hedge so-called tough legacy products as well as certain new loan deals, according to an influential industry group representing around...

Germany’s Highest Court Blocks Ratification of EU Recovery Fund

By Guy Chazan March 26, 2021, Financial Times Germany’s highest court has stopped a law ratifying the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund, pending an urgent appeal against the legislation by a group of German Eurosceptics. Under plans for the €750...

European Regulator Fires Warning Shot Over Fund Liquidity

By Chris Flood March 25, 2021, Financial Times Europe’s top financial regulator has called on asset managers to ensure mutual fund customers can still pull out their money in times of stress, after a series of restrictions in...

City of London Grasping That EU Will Be Closed for Financial Services, Says Lawmaker

By Huw Jones March 25, 2021, Reuters The is a growing realization that Britain should not wait for unlikely European Union access for financial services but get on with building a more competitive City of London, a senior lawmaker...

Calls Grow for More Oversight of ESG Ratings

By Natasha Rega-Jones March 25, 2021, Risk With sustainable investing products continuing to increase in popularity, calls are growing for the providers of environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings to be regulated, and for their metrics to be more...

BIS’s Coeure Says Bitcoin Failed Test on Being a Currency

By Carolynn Look, Francine Lacqua, and Matthew Miller March 25, 2021, Bloomberg Bitcoin’s volatile value makes it impossible to consider the crypto-asset a currency, according to the Bank of International Settlement’s Benoit Coeure. “Bitcoin can be an investment...

Federal Reserve’s Digital Dollar Push Worries Wall Street

By Joe Light March 22, 2021, Bloomberg The financial services industry, braced for what could be its biggest disruption in decades, is about to get an early glimpse at the Federal Reserve’s work on a new digital currency. Wall...

Powell Says COVID-19 Highlights Need to Improve Cross-Border Payments

By Paul Kiernan March 18, 2021, The Wall Street Journal The coronavirus pandemic has underscored the need to improve systems for transferring money across international borders, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday.“The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on the...

Lawmakers Float Bill to Ban SEC Gathering of Audit Trail Data

By Brian Croce March 19, Pensions&Investments A group of House Republicans introduced a bill to prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission from requiring personally identifiable information be collected under the reporting requirements for its consolidated audit trail. The...

GOP’s Toomey Seeks Democratic Help to Free Fannie, Freddie

By Jeff Kearns March 15, 2021, Bloomberg Republican Senator Pat Toomey released a set of guidelines to end government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would need support from Democrats to advance, the latest stab at resolving...

ECB: Don’t Expect Equivalence Extension for UK CCPs

By Rebekah Tunstead March 24, 2021, Risk The European Commission is likely to stick with its June 2022 deadline for halting equivalence for UK central counterparties, says an executive at the European Central Bank. Despite concerns that a...

UK Stands Pat on Brexit Swaps Trading as EU banks Hurt

By Huw Jones March 24, 2021, Reuters Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority said on Wednesday it will not change its open stance on cross-border derivatives trading with the European Union, introduced following Brexit. The trade deal between Britain and...

UK Watchdogs Quash Call for Flexibility on March Libor Milestone

By Huw Jones March 24, 2021, Reuters A Bank of England-backed industry group has resisted a call by a lobby for the loan market to be flexible on a “significant” but long flagged milestone for scrapping the Libor...

Brexit Accelerates MiFID II Divergence

By Thomas Helm March 24, 2021, Practice Insight from IFLR Much hangs in the balance of the UK’s equivalence determination post-Brexit. Will the City of London retain close ties with the EU or, if denied access to EEA...