In other news, Northern Trust takes on corporate actions, Refinitiv works with NICE Actimize, and SIX partners with AccessFintech.
Eurodollar Options Pits to Stay Open
Derivatives exchanges operator CME Group has announced that the physical trading pits shut down since March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic will remain permanently closed as global financial markets move toward a post-pandemic phase.
Not all open outcry venues will close, though.
“The Eurodollar options pit, which was reopened last August, will remain open, allowing these contracts to continue to trade in both open outcry and electronic venues,” according to the CME Group announcement.
CME Group officials also say that, “subject to regulatory review, it will delist its full-size, floor-based S&P 500 futures and options contracts following the expiration of the September 2021 contracts on September 17, 2021,” according to the statement.
“Open interest that remains after the delisting will be migrated into the E-mini S&P 500 futures and options contracts that are available electronically on CME Globex,” officials add. “All individual trading positions will be converted into the corresponding E-mini S&P 500 contracts with the matching expiration date and strike price for options at the current 1:5 ratio.”
The CME Group facilitates the electronic trading of futures, options, cash and over-the-counter (OTC) markets, and offers global benchmark products across all major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural products and metals, officials say. The company offers futures and options on futures trading via the CME Globex platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform. In addition, it operates a central counterparty clearing provider CME Clearing.
CME Group also offers optimization and reconciliation services via vendor TriOptima, and trade processing services through Traiana, officials add.
Northern Trust Targets Corporate Actions Processing
Northern Trust has launched what it is calling “a web-based workflow tool” that will help asset managers and asset owners digitize aspects of corporate actions processing via a consolidated view of corporate action and dividend events affecting fund portfolios, officials say.
The new Event Manager is part of the Omniums middle- and back-office technology platform for alternative fund administration and institutional investors that Northern Trust launched in 2019. Omnium offers administration and middle-office services, including asset servicing solutions. The middle-office capabilities range from trade capture to investor statements around a single set of books and records, officials say.
The Omnium Event Manager also enables the buy side “to coordinate with brokers and custodians to respond effectively to the voluntary events,” officials say.
“Institutional investors with complex investment portfolios can face a high volume of corporate actions, ranging from dividends, stock splits, corporate restructures or acquisitions,” according to the Northern Trust release. “Event Manager replaces the often-manual workflow of monitoring and responding to corporate actions with a platform that includes tools for capture of event and position data, notifications and deadline publishing, and communication with counterparties.”
The Event Manager will use Omnium platform services for real-time positions, referential data, event details, workflow and Swift messaging integration, officials say. The platform also includes:
- Interactive dashboard engagement and event forecasting;
- Automated alerts and notification suite;
- Previewing and sending of instructions to counterparties;
- Previewing and posting of entitlements;
- And automated counterparty mapping
Refinitiv to Resell NICE Actimize Suite to Asia-Pacific
Data and systems vendor Refinitiv, now part of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), will be able to resell NICE Actimize’s SURVEIL-X Holistic Surveillance Suite to firms in Asia-Pacific, according to a recently unveiled partnership.
NICE Actimize provides financial crime, risk and compliance solutions for regional and global financial institutions, and government regulators.
Refinitiv will be able to resell the NICE Actimize system to clients accessing it via cloud computing or an on-premises environment, officials say. The NICE Actimize SURVEIL-X system uses artificial intelligence (A.I.), rule-based analytics, and advanced visualization tools via a cloud-native platform.
In Asia-Pacific, Refinitiv will target buy and sell-side firms, insurance companies, crypto exchanges, regulators and more, officials say.
The vendors cite Data Bridge Market Research that predicts Asia-Pacific financial markets are ripe for surveillance solutions and demand “is expected to grow at a healthy 11.5 percent through 2026.”
SIX Partners with AccessFintech for CSDR Eligibility Service
AccessFintech and SIX are partnering to offer Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) eligibility and penalty data to their joint CSDR customers, solving for one of the major CSDR challenges, which is the sourcing of eligibility data, vendor officials say.
“The CSDR settlement discipline, commencing in February 2022, presents measures to ensure efficient settlement of trades in the markets of the European Union,” according to a joint statement.
“The forthcoming regulatory requirement introduces a mandatory buy-in regime and application of penalties. Furthermore, participants must gather, track, and communicate a significant amount of information through the lifecycle of each trade. Trades that do not settle on time will enter the CSDR process and then require significant collaboration between the settling parties in order to comply with the regulation,” according to the statement.
The partnership will help their clients “identify CSDR eligible trades and instruments, determine the market value in order to calculate the cash penalties, cash compensation, potential buy-in risk, and create a reliable single source for necessary price and reference data between the CSDs and their participants,” according to the vendors. “A key part of this process is correctly determining the CSDR eligibility parameters of each trade using multiple data points.”
That process will be automated via “SIX-provided pertinent data on the AccessFintech platform, for use by sell-side and buy-side clients,” according to the vendors.
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