It’s that time of year when FTF News pauses to review the top securities operations trends of great interest to our readership in the year that was 2015.
It’s been a year in which major banks and other financial institutions were slammed with penalties by the regulators. Mergers and acquisitions were rampant among big industry players. Securities firms of all shapes and sizes were feeling the strain of new regulations on bottom lines and huge staff layoffs became a permanent part of the landscape.
At the same time, a movement to shorten settlement cycles to trading-day-plus-two (T+2) for U.S. markets took shape and an industry steering committee will be taking the lead in moving things forward in 2016 and beyond.
While we will be off on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, we are borrowing a few concepts from the broadcasting model for news and have pre-programmed useful content for the last week of the year.
For Monday, Dec. 28, we have reviewed the FTF News video interviews from the top Ops industry movers and shakers that have been published online. We will run the videos that have gotten a lot of traction among readers and offer insight into managing Ops, IT and related matters. Our embrace of videos has proven to be a hit with readers and industry participants.
Onward from the videos, we have been diligently looking for the top Ops stories and we found that we will need to offer them in two installments.
The first group of the top stories will be announced on Tues., Dec. 29, and will reflect your main concerns for 2015. The second installment of the tops in Ops stories will hit Wed., Dec. 30.
My guess is that you will be surprised at the top concerns as measured by your responses to FTF News stories. It is not by any means a definitive list but it will clearly indicate the issues that are close to your heart.
For the last day of 2015, we have pulled together the oddest/most surprising stories that made us laugh, scream or scratch our heads.
To kick off the New Year, we will launch our special report on Blockchain technology, “Ops Gets on the Blockchain Revolution Bus,” in which we will cover:
- Blockchain’s emergence as a possible threat to established settlement, clearing and institutional payment processes;
- The Blockchain projects and other investigations by banks, other securities firms, industry organizations, established players and startup vendors;
- The perils and pitfalls of a new technology benefitting from the excitement and anticipation of the discovery phase;
- And the useful nervousness and analysis that must accompany the emergence of a new technology.
We hope you will enjoy the look back and will feel the need to read more in 2016.
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