In other FinTech news, OpenGamma raises $10M, Mercury Digital Assets partners with SJMX, and the Jamaica Stock Exchange hires Nasdaq.
ANNA & GLEIF Join Forces for Regulatory Reporting
An initiative is underway that will link International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs) to Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) for global financial services transactions.
The Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) and the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) have announced that April 4, 2019 marks the start of the effort to link ISINs and LEIs, which will assist the regulatory requirements under the U.K.’s Prospective Directive, the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) and Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR).
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) created GLEIF in 2014 to “support the implementation and use of LEIs, to help drive forward transparency within the global financial markets,” officials say. “Public authorities in many jurisdictions rely on the LEI to evaluate risk, take corrective steps as well as improve the accuracy of financial data in order to minimize the risk of market abuse.”
ANNA and GLEIF have been working for the past nine months “on technical developments on how the new global initiative will map ISINs to their corresponding LEIs,” officials say. “From April, a consolidated view of ISIN-LEI links provided by National Numbering Agencies who have opted into the initiative will be provided to the GLEIF by the ANNA Service Bureau (ASB). This published ISIN-to-LEI mapping will be made freely available to all without restriction on the GLEIF website.”
Officials say 11 NNAs have been part of the effort from the start, “with many expected to follow in the coming months,” officials add.
“By linking the two ISO standards together [ISIN (ISO 6166) and LEI (ISO 17442], firms will be able to aggregate data to gain a clear view of their securities exposure for a given issuer and its related entities,” according to officials. “As the registration authority for the ISIN, ANNA has been responsible for evolving and promoting the ISIN standard through its work and collaboration with members, regulators and the industry at large. As a result, ISINs are issued today in more than 200 jurisdictions worldwide, enabling efficient global cross-border trading and improved transparency.”
ANNA officials “are constantly looking for ways to bring about further harmony in the markets by promoting standardization, and are pleased that our work with GLEIF is furthering this end,” says Uwe Meyer, executive director and secretariat for ANNA, in a prepared statement. “Our work with the National Numbering Agencies has made this initiative ready for launch in just a few months, which is an incredible achievement and testament to the collaboration within the industry.”
OpenGamma Raises $10 Million for Growth Funding
OpenGamma, a financial technology specialist in derivatives analytics, reports that it has raised $10 million in an early-stage funding round led by Dawn Capital, a large European-based, fintech and business-to-business software venture capital fund.
Other institutions participating in the round include existing investors Accel, CME Ventures and Cristóbal Conde, ex-SunGard CEO.
OpenGamma’s “analytics solutions allow the world’s banks, hedge funds and asset managers to dramatically reduce the cost of trading derivatives,” the vendor says in a statement, adding that new regulations are “forcing firms to post billions in capital to take market positions with significant increases over the next two years. This is at a time when returns are already under extreme pressure. As a result, efficient use of capital is essential for firms to keep using financial derivatives.”
OpenGamma also spotlights its “rapid growth,” with a “300 per cent increase in recurring revenues in the last 12 months, as well as a geographical expansion across the globe — doubling both the business’ customer base and team.”
Mercury Digital Assets & SJMX Partner for Trading Venues
Mercury Digital Assets reports that it has partnered with the San Juan Mercantile Exchange (SJMX) and the San Juan Mercantile Bank & Trust International, SJMX’s banking affiliate, to create the SJMX Dark Pool and SJMX Blocks, which it calls the exchange’s first over-the-counter (OTC) trading venue for digital assets.
The first trades in the dark pool have been successfully completed, Mercury reports. “The dark pool and OTC liquidity, built for the needs of institutional users, may be accessed via a FIX API or Mercury’s proprietary execution and order management systems.”
“Digital assets are important new trading vehicles that have seen broad adoption by traditional market participants,” Joe Piotrowski, Mercury’s chief operating officer (COO), says in a statement.
Nasdaq Technology Bolsters Jamaica Stock Exchange
Nasdaq Inc. and the Jamaica Stock Exchange have signed a new seven-year agreement for the midtown Manhattan-based exchange to deliver “matching engine and market surveillance technology” to the Kingston-based exchange.
Nasdaq points out that the JSE, will be able to “bolster their product and service delivery regionally and globally” by employing Nasdaq’s market technology.
By using the matching engine, JSE will have the ability to “offer new products, enhance current trading capabilities and improve the latency of order execution,” Nasdaq’s statement adds, and the market surveillance technology will enable JSE, which marks its 50th anniversary this year, to “closely monitor trade activities while strengthening market integrity.”
Nasdaq’s market technology “powers more than 250 of the world’s market infrastructure organizations and market participants, including broker-dealers, exchanges, clearinghouses, central securities depositories and regulators, in over 50 countries with end-to-end, mission-critical technology solutions.”
Nasdaq’s “approximately 4,000 total listings” enjoy a market value of “approximately $15 trillion,” per the exchange.
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