Big banks win dismissal in U.S. of bond rigging lawsuit; Finally, CME honors its investors

First Read

Hits & Takes
JLN Staff

In case you were wondering who CME Group’s Class B board members are: Jeffrey M. Bernacchi, Gedon Hertshten and William W. Hobert were elected in May for one-year terms. CME’s Class B-2 directors are Ronald A. Pankau and David J. Wescott. The Class B3 director is Elizabeth A. Cook. There soon may only be three.~JK

In PanXchange’s most recent newsletter, CEO Julie Lerner writes that she is “exploring the appetite to launch a global physical commodity blockchain alliance” with the goal of developing a roadmap for blockchain applications by those who actually know the industry’s pain points. She floats bills of lading as one problem area. Have a hot take on the idea? Email her: julie@panxchange.com ~SD

Julie Lerner of PanXchange was featured by the Denver Business Journal in their 2018 Outstanding Women in Business Special Report. Congrats to Julie and well deserved.~JJL

OCC is once again supporting the great work of @ALegToStandOn in Chicago and around the world.~JJL

++++

NFL Linebacker, Ex-Goldman Analyst Charged in $1.2 Million Insider Trading Case
Scott Calvert and Andrew Beaton – WSJ
Cleveland Browns linebacker Mychal Kendricks and former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banking analyst Damilare Sonoiki were charged Wednesday with insider trading in an alleged scheme that prosecutors say yielded about $1.2 million in profits for Mr. Kendricks.
/on.wsj.com/2MA45vU

****ARE YOU READY FOR SOME … proprietary information passed along by a former writer for the TV show “Black-ish”? The SEC release can be found here. ~SD

++++

CloudQuant Announces Record First Year Growth and a new Licensing Agreement for Crowd-Resourced Trading Algorithm
CloudQuant LLC is pleased to announce a new crowdsourced trading strategy license agreement. This marks the eighth successful partnership with a global algo developer, since their public launch one year ago. Researchers receive 10% of net trading profits under the terms of the license agreement.
“A crowd researcher can take home $100,000 per year if his or her licensed trading strategy has a 10% return on investment and is trading a $10M or more risk allocation. This type of payout is possible for a college student, data scientist or market enthusiast,” said Tayloe Draughon, senior product manager.
/goo.gl/JBsx6u

++++

MWE World of Opportunity – Cognitive Flexibility in Finance
JohnLothianNews.com

“Don’t over-engineer it. There’s a huge tendency, especially for technical people, to make up complexity.”

The problems Kevin Darby, managing partner at Blue Trading Systems, encounters as a fintech vendor are very different from those he faced as an index options market maker. In this video from MarketsWiki Education’s Chicago event, Darby talks about tackling an ever-changing problem set as your career evolves, as well as what Pac-Man and futures trading have in common.

Watch the video here »

++++

From Patrick Thornton-Smith:
One of my fellow trustees at Futures For Kids, Bernie Connolly, recently died after a long battle with cancer.

She was so full of enthusiasm and courage, especially courage, and loved running even though this was not possible for the last few years. She loved the FFK fun run that was inaugurated earlier this year and was instrumental in making it happen.

So, as she was so full of so much bravery, the least I can do is try to put one foot after another and raise some money for FFK in her name

Here’s the plan. This December I will run a 5k to kick the process off, but it does not end there…..

In trying to keep her name alive, and me a little fitter, I will run a couple of competitive 10k’s in the new year (including the FFK 2nd fun run) and then a half marathon in June, assuming my replacement hip can keep up with the training. For some masochistic reason I am drawn to run my second full marathon in 2020, 20 years after vowing never to do another – so we shall see how that looks after doing the half.

I’m aware of a load of apps and books like ‘Couch to 5k’ that all seem like a lot of common sense to me, so I shall not follow any formal plan but have devised my own, the ‘Haut-Brion to Half Marathon’ plan that advocates wine as a key element in the training.

So, for Bernie, FFK and the image of me attempting the above, if you would like to sponsor me then here is the link.

I hope you got to the end of this without deleting it, and in advance of your generosity thank you for your donation.

#runforbernie

++++

Coinbase Survey Shows 18% of US Students Now Own Cryptocurrency
Leigh Cuen – Coindesk
University students are clamoring for more courses about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
/jlne.ws/2LHdvkd

***** What percentage smoke the dope?~JJL
****According to 2016 data, “39 percent of full-time college students aged 19-22 indicated that they used marijuana at least once in the prior 12 months, and 22 percent indicated that they used at least once in the prior 30 days.” Daily use was around 8 percent in adults aged 19-22. ~SD

++++

++++

Wednesday’s Top Three
This is a frail thread. Yesterday’s top read stories were about depth – on the board, on the beach front and in the office. Our top story for the second straight day was the 4-year-old piece by Jeff Carter Why you should care CME plans to cut B shareholder reps on board by half in Futures Magazine. It accompanied the Crain’s article CME Group floats plan to buy out Class B shareholders, shrink board of directors, which didn’t make the top three again. Second went to Bloomberg’s Miami’s Other Water Problem, leading to a simple question: Is there a market-based solution? Third was from Sallie Krawcheck’s What The Elle, with What Wall Street Didn’t Learn From the Recession, which pointed out the lack of gender depth before the 2008 financial crisis. She asks the question: “As a test: Raise your hand if you think the financial crisis would have been worse if the trading floors were 50% women, instead of 90%+ men?”

++++

MarketsWiki Stats
131,895,954 pages viewed; 23,261 pages; 214,766 edits
MarketsWiki Statistics

++++

Lead Stories

Big banks win dismissal in U.S. of bond rigging lawsuit
Jonathan Stempel – Reuters
A U.S. judge has dismissed an antitrust lawsuit by investors that accused nine big banks of rigging the roughly $9 trillion government agency bond market from 2005 to 2015.
/jlne.ws/2wxWxiA

Finally, CME honors its investors; Though it took much too long, the world’s largest operator of futures exchanges is poised to eliminate a class of directors elected by owners of Chicago Mercantile Exchange seats.
Joe Cahill – Crain’s Chicago Business
It took quite a while, but CME Group finally seems to be embracing its status as a publicly traded corporation. The world’s largest operator of futures exchanges IPOed back in 2002, when its primary business was the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Since then, CME has acquired three more trading venuesóincluding crosstown rival Chicago Board of Tradeóand launched worldwide electronic trading on its way to a stock market valuation of $58 billion.
/jlne.ws/2LEiFwY

Deutsche Boerse cools post-Brexit euro clearing ambitions
Olaf Storbeck – FT
Deutsche Boerse chief executive Theo Weimer has toned down his previously bullish ambition to quickly win a large chunk of the clearing market for euro-denominated derivatives.
/jlne.ws/2N45cDt

U.S. CFTC orders BNP Paribas to pay $90 million penalty for rate-rigging
Pete Schroeder – Reuters
U.S. federal regulators on Wednesday ordered BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) to pay a $90 million civil penalty after settling charges against BNP Paribas Securities Corp [BNPPSS.UL] for attempted manipulation of the ISDAfix benchmark.
/jlne.ws/2LED4Cp

BlackRock’s Decade: How the Crash Forged a $6.3 Trillion Giant; Ten years later, its shrewd moves are a master class in capitalizing on others’ risk.
Annie Massa – Bloomberg
Our memories of the 2008 U.S. financial crisis primarily concern losses: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, homebuyers, insurers that made reckless bets, and American taxpayers who shouldered billions of dollars in bank bailouts. What about the big wins? One stands out.
/jlne.ws/2LEm13k

Capital and RWA for Tier 1 US Banks – 2Q 2018
Maheen Khan – Clarus FT
Last year we wrote about Capital Ratios and Risk Weighted Assets for Tier 1 US Banks and that blog remains popular to this day. Today I will provide an update using the latest quarterly figures, to see if the trend we observed with US Banks increasing capital and reducing RWA has continued into 2018.
/goo.gl/BnPDjd

****Credit risk across the big banks covered handily dwarfs market and operational risk combined.~SD

The Something’s-Not-Quite-Right Economy
Tyler Cowen – Bloomberg
Economists like puzzles, and recent economic data have generated a fair share of them. For instance, the U.S. labor market recovery has been underway for years, yet growth in inflation-adjusted wages remains weak. More broadly, the male median wage still is in the general range of where it was in 1973. There is an investment drought, and yet corporate profits are relatively high. Some measures of monopoly power are up, even as the internet and the rise in foreign competition retain their potential to foster greater competition.
/bloom.bg/2MUrNCH

A return to prudence: how to restore faith in accounting
Jonathan Ford and Madison Marriage – Financial Times
In the summer of 2015, at a session of Ireland’s marathon parliamentary inquiry into the causes of that country’s banking crisis, a senior auditor at PwC made a startling admission.
John McDonnell had since 2010 led the Big Four firm’s team on the audit of Bank of Ireland, the country’s biggest financial institution.
/on.ft.com/2MUq7sT

Audit fines show self-interest is bigger than a Big Four problem; Grant Thornton’s fine highlights how conflicts of interest are endemic
Matthew Vincent – FT
To become an auditor, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service says you must first qualify as a chartered accountant with one of the industry’s professional bodies, typically by winning a place on a firm’s graduate training scheme, having gained a good university degree, and demonstrated “excellent maths and IT skills”. How come, then, some auditors are so incredibly stupid?
/jlne.ws/2LGGMLE

Exchanges, OTC and Clearing

OCC Enhances Resilience with Regulatory Approval of Recovery and Wind Down and Associated Recovery Tools
John Davidson, President and COO, OCC
On August 23, OCC, the world’s largest equity derivatives clearing organization, received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of the company’s proposed recovery tools and proposed recovery and orderly wind-down (RWD) plan. These are critical risk management tools designed to enable OCC to enhance its resiliency as a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility (SIFMU) and successfully manage extreme market disruptions in future financial crises
/goo.gl/CYjzcL

Vienna Stock Exchange Welcomes New Trading Member Susquehanna International Securities
Mondovisione
The Vienna Stock Exchange welcomes a new trading member: Susquehanna International Securities (SIG), which has its European headquarters in Dublin, will participate in the cash market trading of the Vienna Stock Exchange from tomorrow, 30 August 2018. According to the company, SIG is one of the largest proprietary trading firms in Europe. The company was founded in 1987 in Philadelphia, U.S.
/goo.gl/T1FXLE

BSE: India INX launches Global Access with connectivity to CME group exchanges
Press Trust of India via Economnic Times
BSE’s India INX launched a special purpose vehicle, IndiaINX Global Access IFSC to facilitate access to global exchange markets through a single centralised platform. Global Access will offer access to products traded on international exchanges.
/goo.gl/NBNn75

BOX Exchange: Amendment To The Options Listing Procedures Plan
Mondovisione
On August 15, 2018, BOX Exchange LLC (“BOX”) filed to amend its rules to conform to the recently approved changes to the Options Listed Procedures Plan (“OLPP”). Among other things, the rule filing:
/jlne.ws/2wy7Jf5

FESE Position On Sustainable Finance Initiatives
Mondovisione
FESE welcomes and supports the commitment by the European Commission’s as part of the Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth to find collective solutions to the urgent threat posed by climate change and considers that initiatives on sustainable finance can complement regulatory actions taken to fight climate change.
/jlne.ws/2LG4LKQ

Our ear to the ground: Eurex sales staff in interview
Eurex
Part I: Client needs – Brexit, OTC, futurization, cost awareness, regulatory requirements and more
The best product development in the world is of little use if customers do not get to hear about new products and services. Clients need a contact at Eurex who listens to them and takes their interests to heart. We speak to two Eurex Sales colleagues, Simona Simon and Andreas Stadelmaier, who are both in constant touch with their clients. Simona is Senior Vice-President in Global Equity & Index Sales and Andreas Senior Vice-President in our Fixed Income EU Sales unit. In the first part of this series, we focus on client needs.
/jlne.ws/2LFOxl5

AITE group report (part III): looking forward
Eurex
For us at Eurex, MSCI is a major strategic focus point. That is why we constantly explore market developments and continuously expand our MSCI offering. To research MSCI exchange-traded derivatives (ETDs) in today’s market structure, we teamed up with AITE Group. In the third part of the three-piece study, the importance of margin cost in choosing an exchange is outlined.
/jlne.ws/2opdqbw

SGX named Asia’s Best FX Exchange and Clearing House by FX Week
SGX
Awards based on voting by FX and money-market professionals; SGX’s strong FX volume growth and popularity of new products among success factors
Singapore Exchange (SGX) has been named “Best FX Exchange in Asia” and “Best FX Clearing House in Asia” for 2018, following voting by foreign exchange and money-market professionals in FX Week’s annual awards.
/jlne.ws/2N7G4f4

Dalian Commodity Exchange Strengthens Business Exchanges To Improve Market Risk Management
MondoVisione
Recently, the “Workshop on Regulatory Business for Chief Risk Officers of Member Units” sponsored by Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) was held at China Capital Market Institute (CCMI) in Shenzhen. Attending the event were more than 140 representatives from China Securities Regulatory Commission, China Futures Market Monitoring Center and the futures companies.
/jlne.ws/2onLEMo

Fintech

ISN Beefs Up Team with Ex-Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters Data Vet Hires
Max Bowie – WatersTechnology
San Francisco-based management and data consultancy International Solutions Network has hired a raft of seasoned executives to support the company’s expansion and planned new product developments.
bit.ly/2MAbQlw

UBS to sell digital SmartWealth platform to fintech startup
Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi – Reuters
UBS (UBSG.S) is closing its British digital wealth management platform and selling the intellectual property rights to wealth management startup SigFig, executives at the Swiss bank told staff on Wednesday.
/jlne.ws/2LEi6mQ

How Big Tech Swallowed Seattle; Two tech titans made billions and remade the city. Is it any better off?
Noah Buhayar, Dina Bass – Bloomberg
In late September a group of businessmen and economic development officials from Michigan made a sort of urban pilgrimage to downtown Seattle. They walked the streets, starting at the three spherical glass buildings that recently opened as part of the headquarters of Amazon.com Inc. Their goal: to learn how the company had transformed the city. “We didn’t feel like there was any other way for us to get a sense of what makes Seattle special without actually going there and seeing it firsthand,” says Cory Tincher, director for special projects at Rock Ventures LLC, who made the trip.
/jlne.ws/2LEha1O

Collaborative Innovation Drives Higher Value for Big and Small Players in Fintech
Bloomberg Professional Services
Large financial institutions, with their years of experience and access to data and customers, and fintech start-ups, with their agile approach to creating dynamic solutions and financial tools, have learned to leverage each other’s strengths to mutually capitalize on emerging opportunities in the market.
/goo.gl/4hpQ6k

Hong Kong’s digital banking push pits tech newcomers against old-guard lenders
Sumeet Chatterjee, Alun John – Reuters
At least a dozen banks, fintechs and telecom firms are lining up to get a piece of Hong Kong’s retail and small business banking market as the regulator prepares to award the former British colony’s first online-only banking licenses.
/jlne.ws/2LDiSkc

Cryptocurrencies

Andreessen Horowitz’s Crypto Fund Just Made Its Biggest Bet Yet
Camila Russo – Bloomberg
Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz is putting more money into a startup that hopes to become the foundation for the next Internet.
The blockchain-based project, called Dfinity Foundation, raised $102 million in a private sale of tokens to accredited investors, bringing its total capital raised to more than $190 million. Other backers include Polychain Capital, SV Angel, Aspect Ventures, and Multicoin Capital. Andreessen Horowitz, which said Dfinity is the biggest position in its two-month old cryptocurrency fund but declined to disclose how much it invested, participated in the project’s previous funding round with Polychain.
/bloom.bg/2N7HhmZ

Bitcoin Accepted [Everyw]here: Square Wins Patent for Cryptocurrency Payment Network
CCN
Digital payments firm Square has won a patent for a payment network that allows merchants to accept payments in any currency, including bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.
/goo.gl/BVFqRb

Fueled by the crypto boom, blockchain news outlet CoinDesk is venturing into TV
Sahil Patel – Digiday.com
CoinDesk is well-known as a news site covering everything happening with the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It’s also the outlet behind Consensus, the biggest conference of the year within this world. Now, it wants to put its expertise and authority to use by building a media businesses spanning documentaries, TV shows and podcasts dedicated to all things blockchain and crypto.
/jlne.ws/2LEkD0C

A B.S. in bitcoin? These colleges are now offering cryptocurrency-related courses
Aaron Hankin – MarketWatch
A Ph.D. in bitcoin or blockchain? That soon may be a reality as interest in cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology has become more mainstream, prompting college campuses across the globe to promise courses in the nascent subject.
/goo.gl/TLgRKt

****From Quartz – Cornell offers more crypto classes than any other top university in the world

Four Major Cryptocurrency Exchanges Lead Funding Round in New Stable Coin
Cole Petersen – NewsBTC
Four of the largest global cryptocurrency exchanges are leading an investment round in a new e-commerce-based stable coin. The investments come as stable coins become the most popular projects in the cryptocurrency industry.
/goo.gl/bFJVVN

Ethereum Cofounder Joseph Lubin Doubts Tether Bitcoin Price Manipulation
Ana Alexandre – Cointelegraph
Ethereum cofounder Joseph Lubin said on Yahoo Finance’s Final Round August 28, that he doubts manipulation accusations against stablecoin Tether (USDT). Founded in 2014, Tether was “the first” blockchain-powered platform that allows for the tokenization of fiat-backed cryptocurrencies.
/goo.gl/G18j76

Yahoo Finance Welcomes Crypto Traders: Buy and Sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin
The Daily Hodl
In another big sign of mainstream crypto adoption, Yahoo Finance has quietly launched a new option to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. When looking at the latest price data of the four major coins, Yahoo visitors now see “Buy” and “Sell” buttons next to the ticker symbols.
/goo.gl/o7SCev

Three-Quarters of Companies Aren’t Diving Into Blockchain
Olga Kharif – Bloomberg
PwC’s survey of 600 global executives shows limited deployment; Integrating issues with legacy infrastructure blamed in part
Need more evidence that blockchain isn’t the cure-all for Corporate America? Well, a new report from PwC says adoption of the technology is stalling.
/jlne.ws/2wvqLmn

84% of companies are dabbling in blockchain, new survey says
Kate Rooney – CNBC
Companies don’t want to be left off of the blockchain bandwagon. In a new report published by PwC on Monday, 84 percent of executives surveyed said their companies are “actively involved” with the technology. “Everyone is talking about blockchain, and no one wants to be left behind,” according to PwC’s 2018 Global Blockchain Survey, which included 600 executives from 15 territories.
/goo.gl/4Q4XNM

Politics

Trump renews attack against technology companies
Reuters Staff
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday renewed his attacks on technology companies and platforms including Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, saying they were “trying to silence” people.
/jlne.ws/2wwGGkm

Trump administration reconsiders rule on coal’s mercury pollution
Timothy Gardner – Reuters
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Wednesday it was reconsidering part of an Obama-era rule on emissions of mercury from coal-fired plants, in the latest move by the administration to ease regulations on an industry important to President Donald Trump’s political base.
/jlne.ws/2LFIugu

Senate panel to hear from Twitter, Facebook next week
Reuters Staff
The Senate intelligence committee said on Wednesday it would hold a hearing next week to look at how social media companies are responding to foreign influence operations, with testimony expected from top executives of Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc.
/jlne.ws/2LEAxbm

Populism was not sparked by the financial crisis; Although 2008 has been designated Year Zero, US politics owes more to much older events
Janan Ganesh – FT
News of mass Floridian mortgage defaults clouded 2006. The US entered a technical recession in 2007. Unemployment reached double-digits as late as 2009.
/jlne.ws/2wxSNO4

The Biggest Legacy of the Financial Crisis Is the Trump Presidency; How the forces Obama and Geithner failed to contain reshaped the world we live in.
Joshua Green – Bloomberg
It was late January 2010, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sat slumped in a leather chair as the afternoon sun cast shadows across his ornate corner office. He’d just gotten off the phone with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The economy was, if not exactly healthy, light-years ahead of where it had been when he took the job a year earlieróa moment when the world teetered on the brink of another Great Depression. The financial contagion had been halted. Growth had returned. The stock market was 10 months into a bull run that continues to this day.
/jlne.ws/2wv3kJP

Regulation

U.S. Senate Confirms Stump, Berkovitz as CFTC Commissioners
CFTC
The U.S. Senate confirmed the nominations of Dawn Stump and Dan Berkovitz as Commissioners of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Their confirmations complete the slate of five commissioners to fulfill the agency’s mission.
Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo issued the following statement regarding their confirmation:
bit.ly/2LE45WD

U.S. CFTC orders BNP Paribas to pay $90 million penalty for rate-rigging
Pete Schroeder – Reuters
U.S. federal regulators on Wednesday ordered BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) to pay a $90 million civil penalty after settling charges against BNP Paribas Securities Corp [BNPPSS.UL] for attempted manipulation of the ISDAfix benchmark.
/reut.rs/2MY5L1D

****CFTC release here.

U.S. Justice Department Announces Deferred Prosecution Agreement With Basler Kantonalbank
Department of Justice
Basler Kantonalbank (BKB), a bank headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) that was approved today by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Department of Justice’s Tax Division, United States Attorney Benjamin G. Greenberg, and Chief Don Fort for Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation. As part of the agreement, Basler Kantonalbank will pay $60.4 million in total penalties.
/goo.gl/EKbmVE

CFTC Charges Forex Trader and Firm with Fraud and Registration Violations
CFTC
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today filed a federal court enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Jason Amada of New York, New York, and Amada Capital Management LLC (ACM), a New York entity owned and controlled by Amada.
bit.ly/2PoNY1t

European Union May Move To Regulate Crypto
Alexander Weber and Boris Groendahl – Bloomberg
Cryptocurrency traders and issuers of virtual currencies are in for a fresh round of scrutiny from European politicians.
/bloom.bg/2MzC5IZ

Steven Maijoor Addresses Econ Committee on Securitization
ESMA
The Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), Steven Maijoor, has discussed Level 2 measures under the Securitisation Regulation with the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) in Brussels today.
/jlne.ws/2onXtCx

FSA will hold the Opening Ceremony of World Investor Week 2018
FSA Japan
The importance of investor education and protection has been increasing all over the world as globalization is expanding in the capital market.
/jlne.ws/2N3hDiY

Investing and Trading

One-Way Volatility Bets Seen as ‘Fool’s Errand’ by 6,000% Winner
Bloomberg via Investor’s Business Daily
Heads you lose, tails you lose. This year for the first time, volatility traders betting on a jump in equity market volatility and those wagering for calm are both losing.The reason? February’s “volmageddon” blow out, which did enough to sink short-volatility strategies but not enough to protect long-vol trades from the tranquillity that came before and after.
bit.ly/2MFMUci

When Diversification Doesn’t Spread Your Risks
Paul J. Davies – WSJ
If you want to diversify your risks, invest with a bunch of different managers, right?
Well, not always. When investment managers create diversity within their funds, chances are they will look similar to other managers also aiming for diversity. And that means they could all succumb to the same ills. This is a widespread issue, but it is highly relevant right now in risky credit markets.
/on.wsj.com/2N3pflq

Federal Reserve debates banks’ capital buffers as markets surge; Jay Powell faces calls for higher requirements while Republicans push for deregulation
Sam Fleming in Washington – FT
Jay Powell faces an intensifying debate within the Federal Reserve over calls for the central bank to boost big banks’ capital requirements to rein in financial risks ó a move that would trigger fierce political blowback from Republicans eager to ease regulation.
/jlne.ws/2LEpIpI

Biotech Boom Built Wall Street’s $3 Million Analyst; Investment banks offer lucrative deals to attract and retain top-name biotechnology analysts
Gregory Zuckerman – WSJ
A biotech boom is fueling renewed interest in a group that has been out of favor: Wall Street analysts.
/jlne.ws/2LIjzIW

California Moves to Mandate Female Board Directors; Legislators pass bill requiring publicly traded companies based in the state to have at least one woman on board
Vanessa Fuhrmans and Alejandro Lazo – WSJ
California legislators on Wednesday passed a bill that requires major companies based in the state to put female directors on their boards.
/jlne.ws/2wFFGun

Institutions

Robinhood adds hundreds of new stocks to its trading app
Kate Rooney – CNBC
Popular no-fee trading app Robinhood is ushering hundreds of global company stocks onto its platform, as firms such as J.P. Morgan vie to compete using the same no-fee model.
/cnb.cx/2N3adfy

Deutsche Bank CEO stands by global ambitions
Reuters
Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) has no plans to give up its global presence, its chief executive said on Wednesday, despite sizeable job cuts to try and revive profitability.
/reut.rs/2N3Ac6A

Australia’s central bank says power failure hits payment system
Swati Pandey – Reuters
The Australian central bank said on Thursday an internal power failure caused by maintenance of its fire control systems interrupted its Sydney data center and affected its ability to process some payments
/jlne.ws/2wxWgMy

U.S. closely following Danske Bank money laundering case: paper
Reuters Staff
U.S. authorities are closely following an investigation into Danske Bank (DANSKE.CO) over allegations that Denmark’s biggest lender had been involved in money laundering through its Estonian branch.
/jlne.ws/2LEGO6T

A Broker Just Launched the World’s Cheapest Global Fund
Hanna Hoikkala – Bloomberg
A Swedish online stockbroker has just launched what it says is the world’s cheapest global fund.
/jlne.ws/2onbr7t

Regions

Argentina burns reserves, asks for early IMF help as peso crashes
Hugh Bronstein, Jorge Otaola – Reuters
Argentina’s peso buckled on Wednesday, setting a record low close of 34.10 per U.S. dollar after the central bank sold dollars for a second straight day and the president asked the International Monetary Fund for early release of standby funds.
/reut.rs/2MzudHn

****Bloomberg here.

‘Very vulnerable’: Sweden’s currency sits at weakest levels since ’09
Adam Samson – Financial Times
Sweden’s currency has this week hit its weakest level since the aftermath of the global financial crisis, underperforming its developed market peers and potentially posing a challenge to the typical dovishness of the country’s central bank.
/on.ft.com/2N34giK

South African farmers play chicken with Trump tariffs
Joe Bavier – Reuters
Herman Pretorius is just the kind of white South African farmer U.S. President Donald Trump expressed concern for when he barged into the country’s delicate land reform debate by ordering an investigation into the “large-scale killing of farmers”.
/jlne.ws/2LFXN8D

UK’s May, on African tour, urges Nigeria to tap City of London expertise
Afolabi Sotunde, Felix Onuah – Reuters
British Prime Minister Theresa May urged Nigeria on Wednesday to tap into the City of London’s financial expertise as she sought to build a new trading relationship with Africa’s biggest economy and most populous nation.
/reut.rs/2MD1Fg7

Japan’s culture of discrimination saps ‘womenomics’
Kana Inagaki and Robin Harding – Financial Times
Yurina Shimada, a 44-year-old deputy section chief at Japan Tobacco, gives Shinzo Abe some credit for her rise into the ranks of management.
When she was up for promotion in 2013, male colleagues questioned her capability and complained about her advancement. But the prime minister’s push for female empowerment, a policy known as ” womenomics”, outweighed their objections.
/on.ft.com/2N3qf9a

Chinese police arrest $5bn hedge fund fugitive who fled abroad; Authorities in unnamed country help seize FX Group chairman wanted over defaults
Gabriel Wildau in Shanghai – FT
Chinese police have co-operated with authorities in an unnamed foreign country to arrest a $5bn hedge fund manager who fled China after defaulting on bank loans and promised payouts to investors.
/jlne.ws/2omFoof

Chinese soy buyers leave U.S. exporters show empty handed
Karl Plume – Reuters
An annual U.S. soy exporters’ conference wrapped up on Wednesday without any known sales to Chinese buyers, in sharp contrast to previous years where billions of dollars of the main U.S. cash crop have been signed over to China in elaborate ceremonies.
/jlne.ws/2LCS9Eh

Chinese bad debt exchange opens channel to foreign investors; Shenzhen-based QEX first to open onshore NPL market to global fund managers
Don Weinland – FT
China’s largest financial asset exchange is increasing sales of bad debt to overseas investors in the country’s latest attempt to find new buyers for its expanding pool of non-performing loans.
/jlne.ws/2wwa22k

China Banks Managing $16 Trillion Can’t Stop Talking About Risk
Bloomberg News
The biggest banks on Earth really want the world to know how much they’re paying attention to risk.
/jlne.ws/2onHi80

By a 99.3% Verdict, India’s Cash Ban Was a Farce; The exercise was supposed to freeze out black money, but virtually all flooded back.
Andy Mukherjee – Bloomberg
In the chaotic final months of 2016, angry citizens were slamming the Reserve Bank of India by calling it the “Reverse Bank.” It’s taken Governor Urjit Patel, who had only recently stepped into the top job, almost two years to reassert his authority and reestablish the institution’s credibility with a couple of notable successes just this week.
/jlne.ws/2LEBFM9

What’s Eating China’s Stock Market? Everything; Policy paralysis makes a national team rescue unlikely.
Shuli Ren – Bloomberg
As the American stock market stages its longest bull run in history, investors in China can only look on with envy. In preparation for a lengthy trade war with the U.S., Beijing has shifted back to a pro-growth stance. The People’s Bank of China revived a measure to support the weakening yuan, while the Ministry of Finance is ready to build infrastructure again. An income-tax cut for the middle class is back on the table.
/jlne.ws/2LG3iUQ

Germany looks to foreign workers to tackle labour shortage; Hiring skilled labourers from outside the EU is politically fraught
Tobias Buck in Berlin – FT
Herbert Striebich runs a freight company near Rastatt, south-west Germany, that suffers from an increasingly common problem: too much work and not enough workers.
/jlne.ws/2LEdj4Z

Brexit

EU’s Barnier offers Britain close ties but ‘no single market a la carte’
Thomas Escritt, Kylie MacLellan – Reuters
The European Union is prepared to offer Britain an unprecedentedly close relationship after it quits the bloc but would not allow anything that weakened the body’s single market, chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Wednesday.
/jlne.ws/2wxWfs0

Barnier Says No-Deal Brexit Possible Despite Market Optimism
Robert Hutton – Bloomberg
Pound surged Wednesday on Barnier’s earlier comments on deal; Negotiators are due to meet in Brussels on Friday for talks
European Union chief negotiator Michel Barnier warned that a no-deal Brexit was still a possibility, after comments he made Wednesday were interpreted by investors as implying a successful outcome to talks with the U.K. was more likely.
/jlne.ws/2LDYEXJ

Unbowed by Brexit, Swiss Bank Seeks Clients in ‘Red Hot’ North
Edward Robinson – Bloomberg
Julius Baer staffs up to poach clients in Leeds, Manchester; Cheap pound helps northern entrepreneurs, U.K. chief says
The offices of Julius Baer Group Ltd. in Leeds are just down the hall from a travel agency, overlooking train platforms. It’s a noisy, cluttered corner of this northern English city, with buses disgorging passengers at the staergtion entrance and pubs serving up burger-and-a-pint specials. This isn’t exactly the place where you’d expect to find a 128-year-old Swiss bank that caters to the ultra-rich.
/jlne.ws/2wxVTla

Miscellaneous

U.K. Studies Alternative Satellite Network
Robert Wall – WSJ
LONDONóThe British government said Tuesday it would put money into studying development of an independent, satellite-based navigation system to hedge against the U.K.’s possible exclusion from a similar European Union project because of Brexit.
/on.wsj.com/2N1KgwZ

Carlsberg to expand France brewery, its largest in Europe
Reuters Staff
Carlsberg (CARLb.CO) said on Wednesday it will increase capacity its Kronenbourg brewery in Obernai, France, its largest in Europe, with a 100 million euro ($117 million) investment.
/jlne.ws/2LEi8eB

The post Big banks win dismissal in U.S. of bond rigging lawsuit; Finally, CME honors its investors appeared first on John Lothian News (JLN).