Cryptos and senior executive moves meet this week as the rise of DLT technologies continues in the structured product space.

Alexandre Kech, Citigroup’s director of blockchain and digital assets has announced his departure from Citi Ventures to join digital asset platform, SIX Digital Exchange. He joins the Swiss exchange after just one year at Citi Venture, Citigroup’s venture unit where he was also general secretary of the Securities Market Practice Group, a group of custodians, banks, central banks and central securities depositories developing market practices.

September 2022 was a record month for Australia’s Stropro, which has seen growth across all metrics

Usman Naeem, managing director in the equity derivatives division at Goldman Sachs, is another banking executive shifting to the crypto space. The Goldman executive has joined Coinbase Global institutional arm to lead its derivatives efforts as global head of derivative sales and agency trading. Based in London, he reports to Brett Tejpaul, head of institutional sales, trading, custody, and prime services at Coinbase.

September 2022 was a record month for Australia’s Stropro, which has seen growth across all metrics. The company has reached a significant inflection point as total investment flows from advisors has now surpassed flows from direct investor clients. Year-to-date, the Australian fintech has launched over 40 products and completed almost 700 transactions through the platform with the bulk of that being adviser driven. Stropro is now trading with six global investment bank issuers and is in the process of onboarding another three. For the complete interview, click here.

BBVA has partnered with Hong Kong multi-issuer platform (MIP) Contineo as it targets several major private banks in Asia. Contineo is the first MIP BBVA has joined in Asia following the bank's partnership with US MIPs Luma Financial Technologies, Simon and Halo Investing. The Asian private banking market has been recently shaped by the equity-linked structured product offering by the two main MIPs in the region – FinIQ’s EQ Connect and Contineo. The former was launched in late 2014 while the latter which includes six global investments banks, SIX Swiss Exchange and AGDelta among its shareholders, was launched in early 2015.  

Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) is targeting investors seeking to capitalise on the recent trend of gradually rising short-term interest rates. In a first for Thailand, SCB is offering Thai overnight repurchase rate (Thor)-linked binary notes to bet on a limited rise of the interest rate. With a subscription period from 17 October to 20 October, the structured note has a minimum ticket size of THB5m (US$130k) for high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), as required by Thai regulators.

The Netherland’s ING has appointed Zico Yeh as head of client solutions group (CSG) investment solutions for Europe, Middle East & Africa (Emea) within its Financial Markets business. Yeh will be responsible, among others, for the bank’s structured notes and leveraged products offering. He will report functionally to Tim Laureys, global lead equity solutions, and hierarchically to Bernard Coopman, the global head CSG.

In the UK, HSBC has made several changes in its sell- and buy-side structured product teams. Patrick Kondarjian has been appointed as global head of sustainability for Markets & Securities Services (MSS). The UK bank notes he has been instrumental in developing the ‘commercial proposition to support the evolving ESG needs’ of its clients. Kondarjian now leads all aspects of sustainability for MSS, including sales, products, risk management and industry engagement.

Privalto, BNP Paribas’ platform for independent wealth advisors, marketed S&P Next Generation Octobre 2022 in France. The 12-year medium-term note (MTN) is linked to the S&P NextGenerationEU Recovery Equity 50 Point Decrement Index (EUR) TR, which seeks to measure the equal-weighted performance of 30 of the largest stocks within the S&P European Union Benchmark Index (BMI) that may benefit from the recovery plan for Europe, less a fixed fee of 50 points per year.

Finally, new listings of derivative warrants (DWs) and callable bull/bear certificates (CBBCs) in 9M 22 continued to fall, leading to a 24% decline of listing revenue at the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX). Some 9,125 DWs and 26,415 CBBCs were listed on the HKEX from a group of 16 issuers in the first nine months of 2022, a decrease of 27.8% and 19.3%, year-on-year (YoY), respectively.

No new listings of inline warrants (IWs), which allow investors to generate returns during range-bound market, has been recorded since June 2021. The number of IWs with positive outstanding amount on the bourse has dropped to 17 from 19 compared with the previous quarter - they were all marketed by HSBC.

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