Feature
Strength in numbers
Weather derivatives seem to have a bright future: the market is enjoying record liquidity levels as new players, trading ever more diverse products, flood into the market. Oliver Holtaway reports
Pricing the weather
Pricing weather derivatives is different from valuing other derivatives contracts – actuarial methods play a greater role. Steve Jewson looks at the varied approaches available
Growing up fast
Weather trading is seeing strong volume growth in the US, largely due to the influx of hedge funds into the market. Why such a big increase in interest, and what sort of strategies are the funds adopting? By Joe Marsh
Baiting the hook
End-users such as utilities and industrial companies are not showing the same keenness as hedge funds for trading weather derivatives, despite the efforts of banks, dealers and brokers to lure them in. By Joe Marsh
The twin challenges of Basel and MiFID
SPONSORED ROUND TABLE
Sold on property derivatives?
Property derivatives
China's ABS framework on trial
Securitisation
Financing embedded value
Life insurance
Credit model rethink
Synthetic credit
Playing catch-up
Automated settlement
The mezzanine wrangle
Mezzanine finance
The CDO detectives
Cover Story
UK banks set to spend £2.5bn on Basel II implementation, says Accenture
Complying with Basel II regulations could prove a long and difficult process, with UK banks estimated to spend £2.5 billion doing so, a new report suggests.
The final countdown
The Basel Committee's most recent quantitative impact study shows a wider variation in capital among participating banks than many had been expecting. But Gerhard Hofmann, Germany's representative on the Basel Committee, reckons Germany's banks are well…
Ensuring Insurance
Are existing insurance products meeting financial institutions' needs? Giuffre Associates' Sandra Giuffre finds out
Knocking down barriers
A new reinsurance directive passed by the European parliament in early June will eradicate the collateral requirements demanded by European supervisors. With a unified framework agreed for Europe, politicians are now turning their sights on the US. By…
Is Basel II a hurdle too far for US broker-dealers?
Broker-dealers in the US are having to cope with the SEC's capital requirements, while still being somewhat in the dark about the upcoming Basel II framework. By Choongo Moonga
MiFID: the race to comply
The EU's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive has been described as one of the most far-reaching overhauls of the financial industry ever. But with Basel II dominating the headlines, few firms have yet started to prepare in earnest for the 2007…
A rise in VAR
The amount of market risk taken on by the world's leading financial institutions rose sharply last year. Despite continued poor disclosure, most dealers appear well capitalised. By Christopher Jeffery, with research by Glenn Leihner-Guarin
QIS4 results show additional capital is needed, says S&P
The early results of the Fourth Quantitative Impact Study (QIS4), which show a significant reduction in Basel II regulatory capital in Germany and the US, point to the need for additional capital charges under Pillar II of the new banking framework,…
Basel Committee clarifies 'Downturn LGDs'
The Basel Committee has issued clarification relating to the quantification of loss-given-default (LGD) parameters used for Pillar 1 capital calculations, as requested by banks and national bank supervisors. The LGD Working Group, established in…
Basel Committee issues QIS5 instructions
The Basel Committee has released instructions for the fifth Quantitative Impact Study (QIS5) for Basel II, to be conducted between October and December 2005.
New op risk papers
LONDON – A raft of new technical papers on operational risk have been made available on the web over the past few months. A few of the most interesting are summarised below: