We started the week off with news of a new departure from Vontobel’s structured products arm, and some organisations banking on Covid-19 recovery.

Thomas Stadler, head structured solutions banks at the Swiss bank, is the latest senior executive to leave. Stadler led Vontobel's Deritrade structured products platform until last summer, having replaced Eric Wasescha, who left the Swiss bank following the bank’s restructuring at the end of 2019. Stadler has more than 15 years of experience in derivatives and structured products. He has worked for major banks, the SIX, and various well-known brokers of structured products.

Further staff moves were also announced at Goldman Sachs, SIMON and Natixis. Jérémie Vuillard, the former group head of advisory at Société Générale Private Banking Hambros, has joined Goldman Sachs as a managing director, and continental Europe head of cross markets trading, private wealth management capital markets. He reports to Tristan Blood, managing director, Market Solutions Group, in London.

SIMON Annuities and Insurance Services, part of US multi-dealer platform SIMON Markets, has hired Scott Stolz as head of insurance solutions. In this newly-created position, Stolz will be responsible for expanding the reach of SIMON’s annuities platform across new channels and will have responsibility for the development and release of new analytics and design capabilities as the insurtech platform achieves new scale.

Natixis has appointed Arié Boleslawski as deputy head of global markets in charge of equity derivatives worldwide, scarce resource management and XVA, reporting to Michael Haize who has also just been appointed global head of global markets

No news roundup would be complete without mentioning Covid-19.  In the US, J.P. Morgan issued one-year Insight Notes on the J.P Morgan Covid-19 Recovery Basket. The basket comprises 64 equally weighted stocks of US listed companies that may benefit from a recovery from the pandemic. In Asia, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has moved to further open up the domestic derivative markets including futures in a response to a growing demand in the post-Covid 19 era. The country is accelerating to roll out new commodity futures and options including natural gas, refined oil, peanuts and 30-year treasury, said Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the CSRC at a forum on 19 December. 

Remaining in China for some less positive headlines, three US banks are in the process of delisting hundreds of structured products prompted by the blacklisting of Chinese stocks by the Trump administration. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan will delist almost 500 structured warrants and other derivative products linked to the Hang Seng Index which contain the three telecom stocks (China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom) banned by an executive order signed by outgoing president Donald Trump. The order which came into effect last week, bans American investors from owning or trading in the stocks of companies said by the US government to be linked to the Chinese military.

In Germany, the Stuttgart exchange has reported a significant increase in the trading volume of equities, ETPs and securitised derivatives compared to November 2019. Boerse Stuttgart generated turnover of around €9.8 billion in November 2020 – an increase of over 62% compared to the same month of the previous year. Securitised derivatives made up the largest share of the turnover. The trading volume in this asset class was around €3.9 billion – over 62% more than in November 2019. Leverage products generated turnover of over €2.8 billion and investment products contributed over €1 billion to the total turnover.

Picture credit: Flickr.