Another week, another SRP Asia Pacific people move exclusive article.

Ahmad Chaudry has been appointed head of Apac global markets structuring at UBS. He replaces Felix Maratier who left in July. Chaudry, an executive director in markets structuring at UBS Investment Bank based in London, took up the new role last week after completing his three-week quarantine in Hong Kong SAR, a spokesperson at UBS told SRP.

He reports functionally to Thomas de Garidel, managing director, head of derivatives and solutions at UBS Global Markets. The structured product veteran joined UBS in 2013 in London from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). He was promoted to director in markets structuring after working as a dynamic strategies structurer during six years at the bank’s institutional solutions and advisory division.

Staying in the sphere of news and innovation, Singapore crypto unicorn Matrixport has launched the BTC-U Range Sniper, an options-based product aimed at stablecoin holders seeking to accumulate bitcoin while earning high yields when the price of the cryptocurrency moves within a specified range. BTC-U Range Sniper offers an annualised yield (APY) of between six to 200% in either USDT/USDC or BTC depending on the price of BTC upon settlement.

DBS Bank has announced the launch of the first two series of derivative warrants listed on the Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Limited (HKEX) following the approval of the bank as a listed structured products issuer by the Hong Kong exchange. It has launched one series of call warrants and one series of put warrants linked to Tencent Holdings Limited stock, and plans to continue adding its product offerings this year, with additional derivative warrants that cover over 60 major underlying stocks listed in Hong Kong SAR, to respond to ‘rising market demand’. DBS will also enter the callable bull bear contracts (CBBCs) segment to further expand its product offering for Hong Kong investors.

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) of Mauritius is seeking to introduce new regulation to support the development of structured investment-linked insurance products in the country. It has issued a consultation paper proposing to establish a regulatory framework for insurance wrappers, as announced in the National Budget 2020-2021. The FSC is introducing this new product within the Insurance Act 2005 as a fifth class of long-term insurance business, and is also proposing to use the term structured investment-linked insurance business instead of the term insurance wrapper.

Spanish bank BBVA is expanding the footprint of its global equities business to Hong Kong and New York. BBVA Corporate & Investment Banking has launched two trading and sales hubs in Hong Kong and in New York as part of the strategic expansion of its equities business for institutional and corporate clients. Its fully-fledged equity hub in New York consolidates BBVA’s equity activities in North America with the transfer of the trading desk for US equity from Mexico City. The new trading desk will be headed by Marc Fauvain, head of equity trading, Americas. With this move, the Spanish bank is seeking to diversify the client base and the risk profile of its books.

Structured products giant China has seen a surging number of ESG indices developed domestically during the past three years, but the country’s bankers note that the theme remains out of reach for structured wealth products. Chinese banks have issued 78 ESG-linked wealth products, including 32 from their wealth subsidiaries with the shortest tenor of 180 days - assets under management reached CNY40 billion (US$6.1 billion), according to a report from 21jingji, an outlet owned by Southern Finance Group.

According to the report, 45 of the products invest in fixed income and only one invests in equity while the remaining combine both assets.

However, there is not a single structured wealth product tracking ESG indices in China, according to several senior bankers at wealth management arms of Chinese banks approached by SRP.

“The theme is not attractive for structured products as it hasn’t proved the capability of generating extra alpha,” said one of the bankers. “The demand is so weak that there’s no option writer for the mutual funds tracking the ESG indices or the stock constituents.”

Headlines were also made outside of Asia, with Leonteq adding to its digital assets offering new tracker structures linked to actively managed certificates (AMCs). The Swiss structured products provider has launched two delta one certificates tracking the performance of the Swissquote Blockchain Index and the Swissquote Multi Crypto Active 2.0 index, two second generation gauges delivered via actively managed strategies developed by the Swiss banking group.

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