Structured products
WHAT IS THIS? Structured products are investments that have multiple components. For retail investors, the most common form is a bond plus an option – these tend to be standardised, sold in small tickets and large volumes. Managing the risks of large structured products portfolios is one of the biggest challenges dealers face.
FTSE and CNBC launch Asia-Pacific blue-chip stock index
Index provider FTSE and news group CNBC have partnered in a venture to bring a blue-chip regional benchmark index that includes Japan to the Asia-Pacific market
Investec launches boutique subsidiary to target wealth managers
Investec unveils its first boutique products aimed at the wealth and discretionary management market
Partially protected: Dodd-Frank Act spares structured products
Registered advantages
BAML tinkers with tradable volatility index for tail risk hedging
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has developed a liquid volatility index for institutions which are seeking a systematic tail risk hedge.
HSBC bolsters ETF range with emerging markets offering
HSBC has listed a Brazil ETF in London as it builds its fledgling ETF operations and expands into European markets
Volatility, correlation and skew too
Surviving skew
US investors turn to sectors and themes amid growing sophistication
Investors in the US are becoming more educated about the financial markets, which is leading to greater interest in sector-specific investing
Scoach delivers monitoring tool for structured products
Swiss trading platform Scoach Switzerland has devised three structured products indexes to help investors assess performance
Aviva to launch mutual fund-structured product hybrid
Aviva is launching a fund in the US that operates as a cross between a mutual fund and a structured product, combining liquidity and capital protection
Volatility drives UK products towards growth
FTSE and growth products are popular as rising volatility makes income products difficult to structure
Lee appointed CEO of SG Private Banking in China
Société Générale promotes Hsiao-Yun Lee to the role of CEO in its private banking arm in China
Vontobel comes back in fashion
The continued success of its luxury goods certificates has inspired Vontobel to come out with version four
German recovery faces constraints
A constrained recovery
Exchange-traded product volumes up 13% in 2010
Fixed-income exchange-traded products made money, investors turned to gold and a decline in assets followed falls in the equity markets in the first half of this year
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…