Vontobel has entered the Swedish listed structured products market with a range of bull and bear structured certificates geared towards both private and institutional clients.
The Swiss bank kickstarted the listing of its leverage structured certificates on January 12 and intends to expand its offering in the coming months with a focus on mini futures and turbo warrants.
“We have started by offering our range of leverage certificates linked to equity indices, commodities and stocks, but we plan to increase our offering to mini futures and turbo warrants within the next two to three months,” said Heiko Geiger (pictured), head public distribution, Germany & Austria, at Vontobel Europe, who will be heading the bank’s listed products in Sweden.
“Bank Vontobel Europe will be responsible for the distribution, pricing and trading of our range of structured products in Sweden,” said Geiger. “The issuer [of the products] is Vontobel Financial Products in Germany.”
Vontobel chose NGM because of its reach in the domestic structured products market. “In Sweden you have two options, Nasdaq OMX which is the biggest exchange in the country for cash equities, or NGM which is a subsidiary of the Stuttgart exchange and is specialised in structured products,” said Geiger. “We chose NGM because it has a significant market share and the structured products market in Sweden is pretty much concentrated on the NGM platform.”
While the Swiss bank’s initial aim will be to develop its presence in the Swedish market “which is the biggest market in the Nordics, […] NGM offers access to Norway and Finland as well and from a technical perspective it will be very easy to expand our connectivity to those markets.”
With the addition of Vontobel, there are now 18 foreign structured products issuers on the NGM exchange out of a total of 29 active issuers. “We are at the forefront in regards to technology, and issuers see that our functionality fits their needs,” said Tommy Fransson, deputy chief executive at NGM. “The fact that Vontobel has picked our exchange underpins that we have a well-known brand, even beyond the Swedish borders and that is very important for us.”
The market for structured products in Sweden has been experiencing strong growth for some years, with bull and bear certificates accounting for more than 70% of the market, said Fransson. “Since its launch on Sweden’s NGM platform, Vontobel has released an initial offering of more than 300 bull and bear certificates on indices, precious metals and European, US and Swiss equities aimed at different risk profiles.
NGM reported a turnover of SEK5.1bn (€550m) for November, its second-best month for 2014 when it came to the number of trades. NDX Sweden reported a 36% increase of the total turnover compared with the same period last year.
Vontobel was the fifth most active issuer of structured products across Europe in 2014, with over 114,000 products launched. The Swiss bank has 52 products open for subscription in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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