SRP’s news desk reviews the most read stories from last week.
From Seoul to Singapore, market participants assessed the impact of the Iran war on structured products flows, with Korean autocallables in focus and investors shifting toward more defensive structures.
Rather than adding risk, most are reassessing market levels and focusing on enhancing downside protection - James Chye, Bank of Singapore
The Korean stock market suffered the most out of its regional peers, with the Kospi 200 plunging 12.2% on a five-day basis, while structured products’ overall trading volumes in Hong Kong SAR and Singapore were largely unaffected by last week's market drop related to geopolitical tensions, with some investors preferring more conservative payoff structures.
“Rather than adding risk, most are reassessing market levels and focusing on enhancing downside protection,” James Chye, head of investment advisory solutions at Bank of Singapore said.
In France, a new buyside association launched. The trade-body, France Produits Structurés, aims to provide a collective voice for the country’s structured products industry, aiming to address gaps in education, transparency and professional standards.
Structured products are no longer niche - Romain Noirault, France Produits Structurés
The initiative comes at a time when structured products have evolved from niche instruments into central allocation tools for wealth managers, insurers and distributors, demanding greater discipline and consistency across the market.
“Structured products are no longer niche,” the association’s president Romain Noirault told SRP. “With their growth comes new responsibilities around transparency, education and consistent practices. The time was right to organise the market around common
ASN Markets and Chartered Investment entered into a partnership to support institutional investors in Spain with the creation and distribution of structured products and actively managed strategies through special purpose vehicles (SPVs).
The collaboration combines ASN Markets’ local market expertise and institutional network in Spain with Chartered Investment’s structuring, technology and regulatory infrastructure.
People
Vanessa Simonetti, TD Securities global head of sales and structuring, has parted ways with the company after leading the desk for structured notes and equity derivatives (EQD) from New York for nine years.
Simonetti’s registration with TD Securities (USA) terminated 27 February, according to Finra’s BrokerCheck.
Goldman Sachs strengthened its Poland distribution with the appointment of Anna Kujawska, who joined the UD bank in Paris as an executive director. In her new role, Kujawska will be responsible for the distribution of structured certificates in Poland, working closely with clients and partners to further develop Goldman’s presence in the market.
Kujawska joined the US bank from Raiffeisen Bank International, where she spent 10-years, most recently as derivatives and structured products regional manager for the CEE-region.
Market reviews
Sales of structured products in South Korea surpassed KRW7 trillion (US$4.86 billion) in January, up 55% compared to the prior year month. Volumes for capital protected bonds linked to Samsung Electronics registered a 1.5-fold year-on-year (YoY) increase to KRW1.6 trillion, according to the SRP South Korea database.
Meanwhile, equity-linked investments (ELIs) tied to Nvidia continued to gain traction in Hong Kong SAR. The US tech company appeared as the underling in over over 2,400 issuances, around 60% of which were in a basket of stock structures, alongside other semiconductor-focused stocks like Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom.
Listed structured products across Asia saw mixed fortunes in 2025, with Hong Kong and Indonesia posting strong gains, Singapore delivering a mixed performance and Thailand lagging as investors adjust to changing market dynamics.
The UK structured products market continued to be dominated by autocalls in January. Barclays remained the top issuer in an otherwise stable market.
BNP Paribas captured a 32% share of the Swedish structured products market in Q4 2025 while the MerQube Transatlantic Pharmaceuticals 12 Fixed Basket 5% Decrement was the underlying index for the best-selling product in the quarter.
Products
A new defence supercycle is taking hold across global markets, driven by rising geopolitical tensions, Nato spending commitments and long-term procurement visibility, according to a recent report from Morningstar.
That macro shift is now translating directly into structured products issuance, with the most notable growth coming from single-stock products tied to Rheinmetall.
Arcus Partners marketed the Mistral Conditional Income Kick Out Deposit Plan (SG23), a 10-year plan linked to the Solys Mistral US Selection Fund, which made its first appearance on the SRP UK database, having debuted on the SRP France database in 2025 as the underlying fund for LfH Mistral Servi Cap 2037.
In the US, iCapital Markets is gearing up to introduce three autocallable ETFs with its subsidiary Alaia Capital acting as the advisor, an SEC filing shows. The proposed line-up includes m+ Income Momentum Autocall ETF, m+ Income Accelerator Autocall ETF and m+ DualYield Autocall ETF.
Regulation
In its latest Costs and Performance report, the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) highlights a broad decline in fund costs and a rebound in performance across traditional products.
Esma’s data suggests that structured products combine stable, though highly variable, upfront costs with performance projections that may offer less differentiation than retail investors expect.
In the US, an US$3.8m award was rendered against Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade and TD Ameritrade Clearing, according to a Finra award released on 3 March.
Claimants - a group of 15 retail investors - alleged that the broker knew or should have known that the investments and strategy implemented in their accounts were ‘being misrepresented’, stated the award order.
Markets
In markets news, Euronext Euronext introduced four mini options on ETFs, marking an expansion of its financial derivatives franchise.
The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) partnered to modernise and upgrade ASX 24’s trading platform, supporting the next phase of growth.
Repackaging platform Spire added BBVA as a new dealer, expanding the number of participating banks as well as the range of structured repackaging solutions available to institutional investors. Since the programme launched in May 2017, more than €95.4 billion (US$110.7 billion) equivalent of securities have been issued to institutional investors across the UK, Europe and Asia through the platform.
Image: Fotoartist/Adobe Stock
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