Citi, BNP and Julius Baer add staff, while the UK looks to remove the Priips regime.

As usual, staff moves continued unabated.

In Asia Pacific, Citi has made official the appointment of Mario Serafino who joins the US bank as the sole head of Asia Pacific equity derivatives sales, filling the vacancy left by Troublaiewitch, according to a memo seen by SRP. Serafino reports regionally into Paul Marchington, Apac head of investor services sales in Hong Kong SAR, and globally into Quentin Andre, global head of multi-asset group (MAG) at Citi in London. In addition, the US bank has appointed Mohit Singh and Sue Lee as new co-heads of FISS for Markets in Asia effective 1 January 2023. The new co-heads have been charged with executing Citi’s FISS strategy across financial institutions in Asia.

Karthik Chandrasekaran, former head of brokerage and structured products at Citibank International Personal Bank (IPB) Singapore, has joined Julius Baer as executive director, non-resident Indian (NRI) investment specialist. He continues to be based in Singapore. Chandrasekaran started on his new role at the Swiss bank on 5 December after his 16 years at Citi. He reports to Rishabh Saksena, Apac head of investment specialists.

BNP Paribas has made several senior appointments in its global markets Americas division as part of its plans to grow its global equities, global credit and global macro franchises in the region.

BNP Paribas has announced the appointment of Robert McDonald as head of strategic equity solutions and equity-linked origination and Nadim Siddique as head of strategic equity derivatives trading within the bank’s global equities business. Based in New York, they both will report to John Gallo (pictured), head of global markets Americas. The division is led by Nicolas Marque who stepped up from equity derivatives to global equities to run the three teams with Renaud Meary.

Major post-Brexit news in the UK: the government has set out a collection of 30 regulatory reforms for financial services which include a new retail disclosure regime which will phase out Priips. It has launched a consultation setting out plans to revoke the Priips Regulation and is seeking views on a proposed alternative framework for retail disclosure, as part of the implementation of the Future Regulatory Framework Review.

The government said it is prioritising the revocation and replacement of the Priips Regulation ‘due to the clear issues within it, the inflexible nature of rules being set in legislation, and the public interest in replacing it with a regime tailored to the UK market’s needs’.

It’s that time of year again where SRP reviews best-selling products globally. The best-selling US product in 2022 to date is a five-year registered note on the share of the American multinational pharmaceutical Merck & Co. Every six months, the product offers a fixed coupon of 0.60% pa. At maturity, the capital return is minimum 100%. Investors receive an additional return if the underlying share appreciates by more than 14% from its initial reference price, which was set at US$92.10 on 18 May 2022. The initial estimated value of the notes is US$987 per US$1,000 in principal amount. Bank of America (BofA) Finance is the issuer while BofA Securities acts as the selling agent. According to SRP’s StructrPro valuation tool, the spot for Merck & Co (as of 2 December 2022) is 119.48% while the product is valued at 107.4%.

In China, 5,621 structured products have been issued by a group of 16 banks year-to-date (YTD) – domestic players are led by Bank of China and China Merchants Bank while foreign issuers by HSBC Bank and Bank of East Asia. The majority of the products were marketed as retail structured deposits.

The XAU/USD currency pair replaced the CSI 500 index as the most popular underlying by issuance compared with 2021 – the XAU/USD pair was featured across 1,479 structured deposits from four local issuers. Trailing behind was EUR/USD pair, which was the most widely used underlier in the Chinese market in the first half of this year. The pair appeared across 1,044 structured products, followed by the CSI 500 (765 products), USD/JPY (542) and AUD/USD (492).

Gender equality data provider Equileap has partnered with Euronext to launch the Euronext Equileap Gender Equality France 40 Index. The index is the first in a family of indices created by Euronext and Equileap to allow investors to align their portfolios with their values by tracking companies that meet both gender equality and ESG criteria.