This week saw the publication of the winners of SRP’s China Awards - a new category of derivative manufacturers has been set up while new faces include Standard Chartered Bank, Mintrust, Everbright Prestige Capital and Wind.

We kicked off the week with news that Société Générale (SG) appointed its Apac head of cross-asset sales to lead a combined team with two co-heads of structuring which will replace the current head of the business who will return to Europe.

Effective 1 March, Jung-Jin Yoon will take on the role of managing director, head of cross-asset sales & structuring for Asia Pacific (Apac) as part of the French bank’s decision to combine its structuring team together with its cross-asset sales force. Yoon will continue to be based in Hong Kong SAR, according to an SG spokesperson. The reorganisation is to ‘ensure a strong alignment of the bank’s innovation capabilities to its clients’ needs for solutions’.

Expanding the eligible asset universe and the different dimensions of ESG as a source of investment is clearly a trend - Arnaud Heckenroth, Barclays

Leonteq has named a new head of markets while its deputy CEO & CFO is due to depart in August. Alexandre van Gasselt is now head of markets, reporting directly to Leonteq’s chief executive officer (CEO) Lukas Ruflin. In his new role, Van Gasselt will oversee, among others, exotics trading, retail flow business, as well as delta-one, actively managed certificates (AMC), funds and quantitative investment strategies trading activities.

Also in Switzerland, Vontobel’s results were impacted by clients worldwide staying on the side-lines rather than reinvesting or making new investments in various asset classes during 2022. It posted a profit after tax of CHF230m (US$249m) for 2022, a decrease of 40% compared to record year 2021 (CHF348m). Advised client assets, which include structured products, totalled CHF226.6 billion – down 16% year-on-year (YoY).

As of 31 December 2021, the outstanding volume of structured products issued was CHF7.7 billion (end-2021: CHF8.1 billion).

In South Korea, total issuance volume of derivative-linked bonds (DLBs) remained stable in 2022 as derivative-linked securities (DLS) continued to slide, reaching a new low. According to the Korea Securities Depository (KSD), there were 1,136 DLBs issued with a total volume of KRW13.2 trillion (US$9.5 billion), up 14.8% year-on-year, a similar level to the averaged DLB volume from 2016 to 2021.

DLBs continued to outpace ELS which have recorded a sluggish since 2020, reaching KRW3.3 trillion on back of 514 products in 2022 – last year’s activity translated to a further decline from KRW5.5 in 2021, or down 81.3% from the peak last time seen in 2019.    

As part of SRP’s ESG series, Barclays Bank said it is among the group of tier one issuers increasing their focus and activity around ESG structured products over the last few years.

The UK bank made its first foray into ESG structured products in 2012 after launching a partnership with MSCI to launch a family of co-branded Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) fixed income indices for institutional investors to use in index-linked investment products.

Arnaud Heckenroth, managing director, head of equities structuring Emea, sees a continued increase in demand for ESG products - in particular, the design of systematic indices which meet specific ESG objectives.

“[This] remains a very important topic,” he says. “Green structured notes have also been particularly popular. The rapidly evolving regulatory environment is driving some of the new product design.

“The market is evolving. While initially we were seeing most demand on climate related indices and broad ESG indices, it has progressed to combine ESG and thematic indices or a greater focus on the S and the G of ESG.

“Also ‘all green’ solutions have showed the limits in available assets in particular in the context of structured notes. Expanding the eligible asset universe and the different dimensions of ESG as a source of investment is clearly a trend."

Image: iStock