Structured products
Market snapshot
Tim Mortimer of Future Value Consultants looks at the pricing issues for structured products in different markets and provides his trade of the month
Product performance
We compare principal-protected, accelerated growth and reverse convertible products with May 2009 strike dates
Beware the breaches
Credit Suisse has produced a two-year booster cert plus securities product that offers access to the full upside of the performance of the iShares Emerging Markets Index Fund. There is a 70% barrier, and a limit to uncapped returns if an upper barrier of
Risking the first 10%
Gilliat Financial Solutions is offering a six-year income product linked to the FTSE 100 that promises a fixed coupon as well as bonus payments, but only if investors are prepared to put 10% of their capital at risk
Emerging versus developed
Duggan Asset Management is offering a three-year-and-11-month simple growth product that plays emerging against developed markets equities. The product is 95% capital protected and incorporates final averaging
Consequences of the cleanup
The UK Financial Services Authority must bolster laws designed to protect investors while ensuring that it takes these actions in sympathy with regulations being introduced at a European level. Richard Jory reports on the actions of the regulator and the…
Breaking the chains
The need to diversify customer credit risk and the rising importance of fiduciary standards make open architecture distribution vital to structured products’ future. As advisers become concentrated in bigger institutions and market volumes remain static,…
India finds some forward momentum
The global financial crisis could easily have sounded the death knell for India’s nascent structured products market. But as the country’s equity markets have resumed their upward trend, dealers say equity-linked structures are catching on fast.
Unwrapping Russian structures
Since the 1998 stock market crash, Russia’s financial sector has evolved to play host to a derivatives industry sophisticated enough to support the development of retail structured products. As well as introducing offshore products to the local market,…
Lessons in simplicity
The mood at the fifth Structured Products Europe conference in London was distinctly retrospective, as speakers and delegates spent two days dissecting their business practice with a readiness that suggests the industry has learnt from its mistakes and…