Asia Risk
China's smoke signal
World leaders will congregate in Copenhagen next month in a bid to thrash out a replacement to the Kyoto protocol for climate change. While the outcome is still far from clear, new policy stances from Asian nations are already having a fundamental effect
Hedge funds panacea
Confidence in hedge fund investments has hit an all-time low due to poor performance and fears of fraud after the collapse of Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Managed accounts offering improved transparency and control over assets are being tout
Carry trade bonanza
Asian governments and quasi-government entities have issued record volumes of debt this year. This, combined with strong currency moves, is fuelling swaps activity in the markets. Can it last? William Rhode reports
The liquidity lifeline
The Basel Committee intends to introduce internationally binding
A variable response
Ensuring banks put in place counter-cyclical capital buffers has become a key area of focus for regulators across the globe, with some proposing capital cushions be based on financial or macro variables. Alessandro Conciarelli and Mario Quagliariello disc
Confidence crunch
Many financial institutions calibrate their required level of economic capital by considering the probability of default associated with a target debt rating. However, as the financial crisis has shown, confidence in a bank can erode before its Tier I cap
Legally unbound
Foreign banks have been on the sharp end of district court decisions in Jakarta this year annulling derivatives contracts they had struck with Indonesian exporters. The development raises questions about the sanctity of contract, the Indonesian judicial
Shortfall: who contributes and how much?
Understanding risk contributions is a key part of successful risk management and portfolio optimisation. Richard Martin extends the discussion from value-at-risk to expected shortfall and shows that saddlepoint approximation preserves the convexity proper
Bucking the trend
Ranjit Ajit Singh, managing director of the Securities Commission of Malaysia and Iosco chairman, is a rarity among financial supervisors: he favours market deregulation and the use of more risk management tools such as derivatives. Harry Thompson reports
QFII clients face op risk challenges as China sticks to manual processes
A lack of automation in China poses post-trade processing headache for QFII clients
Turbulence in Taipei
Taiwan has a reputation as one of Asia’s more open financial markets. But a Supreme Court ruling last year that raised concerns about the enforceability of close-out netting and new regulatory changes that have impeded the ability of banks to offer…
Drastic action
Authorities at the centre of the financial crisis are prescribing more regulation and more capital as appropriate measures to prevent a similar calamity in the future. But a study released this month by Japanese think-tank, the National Institute for…
Jockeying for position
A slew of market participants are hoping regulatory scrutiny of the derivatives industry will enable them to gain new footholds in the derivatives clearing and settlement value chain. Georgina Lee reports
Battle formations
Major Chinese entities and international banks are steeling themselves for a protracted battle on multiple fronts related to the use of over-the-counter derivatives. The confrontation is killing business and preventing some Chinese entities from hedging…
