Structured products
Lookback: The Which way
An irreverent take on events of the last month, including the Which confusion over structured products, ETF trading, S&P's benchmarks, a Swiss preference for capital protection and more capital gains tax in the UK
Lee reappears at Deutsche Bank as head of GMIP and db-X, Asia
Chris Lee has taken over global market investment products and the db-x division in Asia for Deutsche Bank. Formerly head of the structured products group at UBS, Lee started at Deutsche in the last week of June.
Italy’s new structured products landscape
The collapse of Lehman Brothers, a bank that had produced massive amounts of index-linked products for the Italian insurance sector, left retail investors weary of structured investments and led to a big regulatory shake-up. What role can structured…
ETFs: investors’ flexible friends
Exchange-traded funds have proliferated in Europe, offering institutional investors enormous investment choice and liquidity at a low cost. We find out how and why these products are attracting the interest of a diverse range of investors and look at the…
Skandia offers the insurance route
Global savings and insurance heavyweight, Skandia, has been distributing structured products in Sweden since 2005 when it launched two products with Skandiabanken as issuer. Since then the Swedish branch has gone on to use various other intermediaries…
Seeking simplicity
As the Benelux region’s structured product market emerges shaken from the global financial crisis, a focus on education is needed to rebuild investor confidence and to make sure structured products are being sold in an appropriate manner. Clare Dickinson…
Robert W Baird: succeeding through caution
Setting up a business just before a global financial crisis hits is not ideal, but Robert W Baird’s structured products business, set up in 2007, has survived the turmoil by sticking to conservative products and avoiding the more complex deals offered by…
World Cup trades hit fever pitch
As the dust settles on the World Cup and those that bought televisions on the basis that their national football team would win the tournament wonder how to match their rash expenditure with reality, Richard Jory reviews the copious research supporting…
Hong Kong Structured Products Bill ready for first reading
The introduction in Hong Kong of the new laws for structured products took one step closer with the announcement of a first reading for the bill on July 14. A lengthy consultation period that followed the creation of the first draft of proposals has…
Building resumes on property products
Less volatile than equities and on offer in a variety of forms and available in either growth or income style, commercial property has made a low-key return to the investment world. As property values recover, access comes in the form of exchange-traded…
ETFs: simple, or simply confusing?
Exchange-traded funds first appeared 20 years ago as transparent, easy to understand alternatives to actively managed funds. But as they have developed some of this transparency and simplicity has been lost. The first Structured Products ETF survey asks…
Taking on variable risk
The variable annuity business in Asia continues to attract banks and insurance companies. The potential market is of a staggering size which would far surpass the volumes in the US or Japan, the two biggest users of the products. Harry Thompson…
Desperately seeking a benchmark
The market for exchange-traded funds in Asia has been slow to develop. A regional benchmark ETF is still lacking, while the promise of high-volume trading in products cross-listed from Europe and the US has yet to materialise. Richard Jory reports from…
Market snapshot
A dramatic increase in the notional issuance of accelerated growth products in the US has catapulted Bank of America to the top of the issuance charts
FVC custom indexes
The three FVC indexes fell between April and May 2010, mirroring the falls in the market’s benchmark indexes
Product performance
The three products reviewed this month all have a strike date of 11 December 2009. The products are valued weekly and the results are shown along with the performance of the underlying asset. All three products are fairly typical of products that are…
Locking in principal protection
Merchant Capital is offering UK investors an at-risk growth product linked that locks in capital protection should the daily closing be at or above 110% of the initial level. Morgan Stanley is the issuer.
Morgan Stanley Jump
Morgan Stanley has issued Jump Securities, a structured products based on the performance of a basket composed of the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund and the Dow Jones Eurostoxx 50. Principal is not protected and the upside above the target…