Crypto news is firmly at the forefront of news this week, while innovative product launches continue out of Asia Pacific.

Marex Solutions has hired Ilan Solot and Mark Arasaratnam to co-head digital assets, derivatives engine. Solot joins from Tagus Capital, a crypto hedge fund, having previously worked in banking and the official sector at the New York Fed and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He has a global macro, finance, and digital assets. Arasaratnam joins from Invstr.com. He has over 17 years’ experience in FX trading, global macro, B2B and B2C sectors. Arasaratnam has built global teams in data science and analytics in ad-tech, scaled e-commerce businesses and was most recently an advisor to a fintech start-up in London with a specific focus on Web3.0 strategy, including tokenisation and DeFi.

Cboe Global Markets has hired Iouri Saroukhanov as its new head of European derivatives. Based in London, Saroukhanov will be responsible for Cboe Europe Derivatives (CEDX), its Amsterdam-based equity derivatives exchange reporting directly to Natan Tiefenbrun, president of Cboe Europe.

Austrian structured products provider Raffeisen Centrobank (RCB) is offering guaranteed annual income on top of full capital protection to help ease the volatility in clients’ portfolios.

RCB is marketing two 100% capital-protected certificates in Austria: 1% Dividend Stocks Winner and 1% Dividend Stocks Bond.

The certificates have a maturity of five years, and their return is linked to the Stoxx Global Select Dividend 100 Price EUR index. The former offers 100% uncapped participation in the rise of the index, while the 1% Dividend Stocks Bond pays a fixed coupon of 28% if the index quotes at or above its starting price on 19 November 2028.

Over in Asia, which is consistently at the forefront of product innovation, HSBC has deployed an alternative to principal-protected structured deposits aimed at Chinese retail investors. It has issued its first equity-linked investment (ELI) with zero capital protection in China following a one-year development.

With a six-month tenor starting from 2 November, the first tranche of the Feng Rui - CNY Convertible Non-Principal Protected Structured Deposit 6-001 (丰瑞系列 -人民币可转换非保本结构性存款产) struck on 31 October after a three-day subscription period. The new product offers an annualised coupon of four percent to 14%, indicative at 9% as of 24 October.

The UK bank’s wealth revenue fell 9% to US$1.9 billion in Q3 22 year-on-year (YoY) mainly due to adverse insurance market impacts of US$375m and lower investment distribution. Wealth balances posted a 10% decline YoY, reaching US$1.47 trillion as of the end of Q3 22. On a quarterly basis, this was a 5.6% decrease, according to HSBC’s latest earnings presentation.

Swiss exchange SIX’s trading turnover in October 2022 reached CHF79.3 billion (€80.4 billion), 16.1% lower than a month ago, while the number of transactions decreased 2.9% to 4,717,648. In the first 10 months of the year 2022, the trading turnover on SIX reached CHF1.04 trillion, 3.1% less year-on-year (YoY), while the number of transactions dropped 0.9% to 52,135,512.

German counterpart Boerse Stuttgart generated turnover of around €6.4 billion in October based on the order book statistics. Securitised derivatives made up the largest share of the turnover. The trading volume in this asset class came to around €3.1 billion. Leverage products generated turnover of around €2.5 billion – around two percent more YoY. Investment products contributed around €673m to the total turnover.

Kenanga Investment Bank has inked an agreement with AntChain Technology, part of Ant Group, to build Malaysia’s first wealth SuperApp using AntChain’s proprietary mobile platform solution. The application aims to help Malaysians grow their wealth through a platform that delivers financial products transparently. The SuperApp will extend the suite of digital products that Kenanga has rolled out, from Rakuten Trade to Kenanga Digital Investing, a robo-advisor that has amassed more than MYR250m in AuM since its launch in February.

Image: Pixabay.