Latest: Leonteq moves to complete Italian job

The move to Milan is part of Leonteq’s planned expansion to increase its global footprint, and follows the recent appointment of Alessandro Ricci as deputy head investment solutions, in June.

Italy has become a target market for Leonteq’s structured products business – the firm has now over 1,000 Leonteq certificates listed on EuroTLX and SeDeX. Leonteq entered the Italian public offering market in 2016 via the EuroTLX multilateral trading facility, and issued its first product on SeDeX just a year ago in October 2019. The continued demand for structured products in Italy also led to the first launch on EuroTLX of products issued by EFG International via Leonteq’s technology platform earlier this year.

Leonteq’s onshore business in Milan, which commenced at the beginning of October 2020, is managed by Marco Occhetti (pictured), managing director and head South Europe at Leonteq. Occhetti joined Leonteq in 2015 and has built up the offering for the Italian market over the past years.

Before joining Leonteq, Occhetti led the private banking investment solutions business in Ticino and Southern Europe at Commerzbank for six years and was vice president of equity derivatives at Deutsche Bank from 2007 to 2009, where he serviced institutional clients. Prior to this, he worked at Morgan Stanley in the institutional equity derivatives division and at Commerzbank.

HSBC launches digital investment account

HSBC Hong Kong has launched a new digital investment account aimed at clients seeking to manage their investments without visiting a branch.

HSBC personal customers can open an investment account 24/7 remotely by logging on to HSBC HK Mobile Banking App – the bank said ‘eligible customers can complete the investment account opening procedure in a couple of minutes by six steps solely on their mobile, including submitting their address proof’.

The launch is part of the bank’s goal of ‘making wealth management services accessible to everyone in Hong Kong’ through its digital capabilities.

‘With this new service, customers can now manage their wealth entirely on mobile – open bank and investment accounts, complete their risk tolerance assessment and invest in a range of products,’ said Sami Abouzahr (right), head of customer wealth, wealth and personal banking, Hong Kong. ‘They can also review their portfolios on the go with the dashboard on mobile banking.’

Once the investment account is activated, customers who completed the risk profiling questionnaire can access a range of investment products and services such as stocks, unit trusts, bonds, structured products or FlexInvest across all channel, including mobile, internet and phone banking, also through Easy Invest or the bank’s retail outlets.

Simon Markets adds structured ETFs

Simon Markets has expanded its digital platform to give financial professionals’ access to exchange traded funds (ETFs).

The US platform has launched a new ETF module to include buffer ETFs from Innovator Capital Management which are part of the firm’s defined outcome ETFs range, and offer exposure to the upside performance of major market indices with known levels of downside buffers.

Buffer ETFs seek to offer downside risk management features over predetermined outcome periods in a similar fashion to other risk-managed solutions on the platform such as structured notes and indexed annuities.

Simon Markets connects issuers and distributors of structured investments as well as annuities. The platform has over 3,000 live structured notes worth more than US$6.1 billion, according to SRP data.

Goldman Sachs is the most active issuer on Simon’s platform with over 2,700 notes issued by Goldman Sachs (624) and GS Finance (2,062), followed by JP Morgan (61 products), Citi (59) and TD Securities (39). The top three underlyings on the platform are the S&P 500 (1,314 products worth US$3.2 billion; Russell 2000 (804 products/ US$1.1 billion; and Eurostoxx 50 (401 products/ US$610m).

Simon Markets is owned by a consortium of seven financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Credit Suisse, HSBC, JP Morgan, Prudential and Wells Fargo. The platform provides analytics and information on over 37,000 structured investments from 17 issuers.

GraniteShares 3x long Rolls Royce ETP delivers 483.7%

GraniteShares, the US ETP provider offering a range of 3x short and 3x leveraged ETPs on popular UK and US stocks listed on London Stock Exchange, has delivered an extraordinary 483.7% return to investors in its GraniteShares 3x long Rolls Royce ETP after the Rolls Royce share price increased by 96.5% last week.

On 6 October, turnover in the 3x long Rolls Royce ETP (3LRR) was £1,185,819.28 and by Friday the daily volume hit £4,784,934.28 with over 407.3 million securities traded. 

GraniteShares 3x Long Rolls-Royce Daily ETP is a collateralised product that tracks, excluding fees and other adjustments, the performance of the Solactive Daily Leveraged 3x Long Rolls-Royce Holdings plc Index – a gauge that provides three times the daily performance of Rolls-Royce Holdings shares. 

BlackRock enters swaps space in synthetic u-turn

BlackRock has launched the iShares S&P 500 Swap Ucits ETF a new synthetic tracker offering investors access to the US stock market via a swap-backed derivatives based on the S&P 500 index.

The iShares S&P 500 Swap Ucits ETF is available to investors on Euronext, London Stock Exchange and Xetra for a total expense ratio of 0.07%. The new tracekr expands the range of S&P 500 ETFs from BlackRock, which includes the US$37bn physically replicated iShares S&P 500 Core Ucits ETF – the biggest S&P 500 ETF in Europe.

JP Morgan and Citi will act as the swap counterparties on the synthetic fund which does not pay withholding tax on dividends. The launch represents a change of tune at BlackRock and a U-turn from the US fund manager CEO Larry Fink who drew heavy criticism to ETFs using derivatives to amplify returns a few years back.

Fink called for regulators to look at the structure of leverage products and regulate them differently.