The most read stories in the past seven days from our news desk.

From Hong Kong’s retail yield hunt to Taiwan’s FCN concentration and Korea’s shift into protection, Apac structured products are booming, but simplicity, leverage and complacency may be building new risks beneath the surface, according to panelists at the SRP Asia Pacific 2026 conference, which took place in Hong Kong on 24 June.

“Hong Kong is the number one market in terms of issuance velocity: very AI and tech driven,” said Thomas Bord of Barclays during the opening panel, Asia Structured Products Market: Flows, Yields & Performance.

While fixed coupon notes continue to dominate private bank distribution, derivative income ETFs are gaining traction as an income solution for the mass affluent market.

CSOP Asset Management’s Yana Zhang said that the covered call ETF segment has expanded from a niche strategy worth less than US$10 billion five years ago to more than US$200 billion globally.

“We definitely see the same trend in terms of investors hunting for higher, steadier yield through the fund space,” she said.

During the evening of 24 June, the best in class in the structured product industry gathered for the SRP Asia Pacific Awards 2026, with BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB, HSBC and S&P Dow Jones Indices among the winners.

People moves

SRP reported on a number of high-profile appointments and departures this week, starting with Barclays, which hired Ishu Bansal as co-head of exotics structuring and global lead for institutional exotics structuring in Europe, Middle East & Africa (Emea).

Bansal joined from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he has been director and senior structurer since October 2024.

Arnaud Heckenroth, managing director and global head of equity exotics and hybrids structuring, left the UK bank after 13 years. He is understood to be joining a market maker.

Banque Syz, a Swiss private bank, appointed Sébastien Pannelier as head of structured products. Based in Geneva, Pannelier will lead the bank's structured products franchise, overseeing product origination, design and distribution across equity, credit, FX, rates and multi-asset solutions for private banking clients.

Meanwhile, Julien Grunebaum stepped down as head of structured investments at Raffles Family Office after five years with the firm. Hong Kong-based Grunebaum was responsible for strengthening internal distribution and enhancing the firm’s overall investment capabilities.

In the UK, BNP Paribas expanded the responsibilities of Thomas Jamie, by elevating him to a newly created position. The role combines his existing position as head of UK quantitative investment strategies (QIS) cross-asset sales with head of UK institutional and private banks & distributors sales for equity derivatives.

Products and market reviews

Market Stability Fund, a Dutch domiciled fund of structured products, saw its assets under management increase to €204m (US$232m) end-May 2026. The fund closed May 1.52% higher compared to April while its cumulative performance for 2026 year to date reached 5.48%.

The Insignia Defined Returns Fund, whose net asset value increased by 4.6% in May, sold out of its Airline Note that was due to mature in early June. Given that American Airlines was hovering close to its capital barrier, and there was a risk of significant downside due to tensions in the Middle East, the fund managers felt it was prudent to sell the note at a price of 93.86.

“Subsequently, American Airlines did drift lower and the active decision to sell delivered significant value for the fund,” said Peter Murphy, founder and managing director Insignia Financial.

Deutsche Bank Belgium distributed the Inflation Note 2031 in its local market. The five-year structured note is issued on the paper of parent company Deutsche Bank AG and offers access to the Eurostat Eurozone HICP Ex Tobacco Unrevised Series NSA.

In Greece, Unicredit launched a capital protection note linked to the MSCI Europe Smart Security Defense Infrastructure Top 50 Select 4.5% Decrement Index while Société Générale listed a suite of four daily leverage certificates on the Singapore Exchange (SGX), offering investors leveraged and inverse exposure to gold and silver for the first time in the segment.

Thematic sectors like AI and semiconductor manufacturing now attract nearly half of all German investment interest, according to a survey conducted in June by the German association for structured securities (Bundesverband für Strukturierte Wertpapiere or BSW).

For 16.8% of investors, energy transition and climate technology are the main focus, while defense and infrastructure are the most important investment theme to 14%.

Barclays' collaboration with MB Structured Investments in the UK resulted in a market share of almost 30% in May.

Eleven distributors were active during the month. Of these, the top three – MB Structured Investments, Walker Crips Structured Investments and Hilbert – captured two thirds of the UK market between them.

Markets

Luma Financial Technologies has inked a deal with TD Securities to provide lifecycle management, analytics and performance reporting tools to the Canadian bank’s wealth management clients for structured notes.

The mandate will give investment professionals across TD Securities’ Canadian structured products distribution relationships a single hub to manage their entire structured product holdings, including self-issued as well as third-party notes.

FVC’s Tim Mortimer analysed Buffered ETFs for SRP. The structures, which debuted in the US market in 2018, were the first of what is now usually known as the ‘defined outcome ETF’ family.

VanEck introduced the VanEck China Semiconductor ETF,  which tracks Chinese companies operating across the country's semiconductor industry the MarketVector China Semiconductor 25 Index.

Also, FTSE Russell partnered with CCB to roll out an offshore RMB green bond index; Stoxx teamed up with BNP Paribas Asset Management to launch the BNP Paribas Easy European Equity Buffer ETF, the firm’s first defined outcome exchange-traded fund on European equities; and Cboe introduced the first products under its prediction markets offering.

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