The Greece Crisis: A Game with No Winners

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Top Headlines

The Greece Crisis: A Game with No Winners – Profit & Loss (free story)
Economists agree that although a Greek default and potential exit from the Eurozone will have less of an impact on FX markets than three years ago, it will still have significant implications.


CFTC Targets Banks Moving Swaps Business Overseas – Profit & Loss (free story)
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has proposed a new rule regarding the margin requirements for uncleared swaps that will prevent US banks shifting business overseas in an attempt to avoid swaps regulation.

Buy Side Facing Up to the Derivatives Challenge – The Trade
The buy-side share of the derivatives business has grown to record levels over the last decade, as they use derivatives in significant volumes to hedge risks or tap hard-to-access investments. But will this work be curtailed due to the clutch of new market regulations on the horizon?

MAS to Adopt New Regulatory Approach to Boost Financial Technology System – ChannelNews Asia
With the rising wave of new financial technology, the Monetary Authority of Singapore plans to adopt new regulations and initiatives to grow a conducive ecosystem for innovation.

Libor Trial Hears of Lead-Up to Hayes’s Dismissal from Citi – Operational Risk & Regulation 
In the weeks after he joined Citigroup’s Tokyo swaps desk, Tom Hayes enlisted Hayato Hoshino, a yen swaps trader based in London, to “become friendly” with the bank’s treasury desk and “casually” request London interbank offered rate (Libor) fixes, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard today (June 29).

Banks and Exchanges Turn to Blockchain – Financial Times (subscription)
The blockchain – the technology that underpins bitcoin – has been called “the future for financial services infrastructure”. Now banks, clearing houses and exchanges are becoming increasingly excited at the prospect of blockchain fundamentally transforming their business models.

 

Regulatory News

CFTC Boss Massad One Year In – FOW (subscription)
Timothy George Massad became one year ago the most powerful derivatives regulator on the planet and was pitched headlong into a regulatory maelstrom that had been building since the financial crisis of 2008. By mid­-2014, most of the Dodd-­Frank rules had been implemented but problems were already emerging, not least the obvious cooling of relations between US regulators and their European peers.

Normal Monetary Policy is Far Away: RBA – Australian Financial Review (subscription)
Australia governor Glenn Stevens has warned it may be many years before global monetary policy returns to normal.

Indonesia Bans Foreign Currencies in Domestic Transactions – Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Indonesia’s central bank is pushing through a regulation prohibiting foreign currencies, including US dollars, from being used in domestic transactions as it tries to get a grip on the falling rupiah, despite concerns from some industries.

Prosecutors Launch Deutsche Libor Probe – Financial Times (subscription)
Frankfurt prosecutors are examining the role played by individuals connected with Deutsche Bank’s involvement in the Libor rate-rigging scandal — potentially opening up a new front in the affair that has rocked Germany’s biggest bank. The investigation is the first step in a procedure that could lead to criminal charges.

 

Company News

Citigroup Overtakes JP Morgan as Top US Derivatives Dealer – Bloomberg
Citigroup overtook JP Morgan to become the largest derivatives dealer in the US.
The firm’s derivative contracts as measured on a notional basis were $56.6 trillion at the end of the first quarter, according to data compiled by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

ICE, CME and Where Exchanges Are Headed Next – Bloomberg
How the exchange giants ICE and CME acquired their way to dominance, a drawn-out drama.

UOB Bullion and Futures Aims for Global Clearing Role – Asia Risk (subscription)
A clear trend emerged when Matthew Png, chief executive of UOB Bullion and Futures (UOBBF), looked at the US and European clearing markets four years ago – and one which wasn’t replicated in Asia. “Look at the three most important continents for derivatives clearing,” he says. “When you go to the US, the top five players are always American, likewise in Europe the five biggest firms are European.”

 

Market Savvy  

Explainer: Why is the Euro Resilient?
Financial Times
Greece’s role in the eurozone is now at stake and a “no” vote in Sunday’s referendum could herald its exit. In the meantime, it is not good PR for the eurozone to have one of its members impose capital controls and bank holidays and for Greeks to have to queue to get money out of cash machines. But would “Grexit” necessarily fatally undermine the single currency project?

 

Press Releases

Thomson Reuters Launches Open Source Market Data APIs 
Thomson Reuters has introduced the Elektron API family, a set of open-source application programming interfaces that simplify access to Thomson Reuters’ data feeds and services, and help developers to create their own customised applications.

Object Trading to Provide Global Trading Infrastructure for TradingScreen Clients
TradingScreen, a provider of liquidity, trading and investment technology via SaaS, has integrated with Object Trading’s global DMA service platform.

 

Industry Events