ESG is as always high on the agenda, as are staff movements globally.

Neven Graillat has joined J.P. Morgan in Paris as head of the newly created global markets sustainability centre within the bank's global structuring & solutions unit, one week after parting ways with its previous employer BNP Paribas, according to a memo seen by SRP

Graillat will be responsible for channelling and managing increasing global interest in this area across asset classes and client types as well as for developing markets solutions to meet this demand. He will report to Rui Fernandes and Masi Yamada, co-heads of global investor structuring.

In an interview with SRP, Jean-Christophe Jouannais, director, structured products engineer at Société Générale Private Banking (SGPB), discussed the aftermath of the bank’s first charitable structured product which was recognised by SRP in 2019 as ‘Deal of the year’. It was distributed in France, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic and Monaco, and included a double donation mechanism with Société Générale paying an amount equal to 10bps of the initial investment to associated charities, plus a subsequent donation linked to performance - if a product autocalled after one year, it would provide a gift of 10bps, if it autocalled after two years, the gift would increase to 20bps, and so on. In 2020, the bank used the positive impact wrapper to support a number of projects in Africa, and since October this year it has used a new positive impact wrapper to support small companies in French regions with high rates of unemployment.

We wanted to provide a friendly space, such as the Starbucks or WeWork experience as opposed to a traditional corporate environment - Eduardo Galvez

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is set to launch four new index futures contracts based on the MSCI Climate Paris Aligned Indices. Subject to regulatory approval, the contracts are expected to launch in January 2022 on ICE Futures US. The new US dollar-denominated futures contracts are designed to help investors align with a net-zero world by using a variety of proprietary, key climate metrics and models, including climate value-at-risk, low carbon transition score and companies’ carbon emission reduction targets.

The Asia Pacific region remains very much at the forefront of key staff appointments.

BBVA has appointed Stephen Cheuk Wa Sun as head sales, global equities, Asia, to continue building an investment product franchise in Asia Pacific after setting up an equity trading and sales hub in Hong Kong SAR. Cheuk Wa Sun reports to Eric Michl, head of equities, Asia, who joined the Spanish bank in September from Natixis, and to Carlos Gil, global head of equity sales. Keri Neo, the head of SGX's securitised products business, has parted ways with the Singapore exchange after 14 years of service to join Tradeweb in a product and business development role focusing on equities and ETFs electronic trading. Based in Singapore, Neo reported to Chan Kum Kong, the head of research and products equities and fixed income at SGX. Neo’s departure is the second high-profile exit after Simon Karaban, head of index services at SGX, left the exchange earlier in November.

The number of new structured warrants (SWs) listed on Bursa Malaysia has increased by 16.8% to 396 in Q3 21 quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) – the number of products listed stood at 1,088 in the first nine months, up 22% year-on-year (YoY) driven by ‘easy access to foreign underlying assets’.

Listing and issuer services revenue at the exchange increased by 10.9% to MYR17.9m QoQ ‘mainly due to higher initial listing fees earned from IPOs and structured warrant listings,’ according to Bursa Malaysia’s Q3 21 earnings release. The third quarter saw a significantly wider use of Hong Kong equities in structured warrants in Malaysia, which feature a tenor of less than one year. Macquarie Capital Securities (Malaysia) remains well ahead as the top issuer in the market with 141 new SWs in Q3 21, or a 35.5% market share, followed by Malaysia’s AmBank (59), Kenanga Investment Bank (56), CIMB Bank (52), Maybank (48) and RHB Investment Bank (41).

SRP spoke to Eduardo Galvez, CCO and co-founder at Zest Capital, about the power of education to increase investor knowledge and adoption. Before the launch of Zest Café – the firm’s working space – earlier this year - Zest Capital was very active in promoting education among its stakeholders since its launch in 2018.

As the firm expanded its business it moved to new facilities to accommodate the growing workforce and have a space where it could develop and implement new activities around education.

Zest Café was launched in 2021 with the idea of “creating a working space where people could come to work and learn about finance, capital markets and investing”, says Galvez.

Part of the facilities include a café area where people can meet over a drink or have lunch to discuss ideas, problems, and there is also a workroom with Bloomberg terminals to support a hands-on experience.

“We wanted to provide a friendly space, such as the Starbucks or WeWork experience as opposed to a traditional corporate environment,” says Galvez. “We were ready to go live in March of 2020 but the Covid pandemic prevented us from using it, so we are very excited to be able to open the doors.”

Image credit: Flaticon