Derivs - People and Markets

MEP Markus Ferber has come out swinging at the European Securities and Markets Authority for appointing chief French regulator Robert Ophèle to temporarily chair its central counterparty (CCP) supervisory committee.

The European Central Bank’s private sector working group on euro risk-free rates has recommended market participants replace Eonia products with €STR-referencing derivatives “as soon as possible” and flagged a threat to swaptions in the transition.

A politically charged fight over position limits on commodity derivatives appears set to kick off after the European Commission opened a consultation on the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) this week.

Alain Gallois will become Natixis’s global head of investment banking, replacing Mohamed Kallala. The latter is heading over to run global markets, with that role’s incumbent, Luc François, leaving the bank.

Ian Hunt, global head of sales at Quantile Technologies, has left the firm. This week the compression provider firm broke its own record in a euro rates run.

HSBC’s new strategic plan involves numerous changes to its investment banking division, including shifting resources to Asia and the Middle East, reducing the scale of many operations in the European markets business, and combining product functions with commercial banking.

The European Commission has opened a public consultation on MiFIR/MiFID II, as it takes stock of two years of the sweeping regulations.

Lyxor has launched a suite of environmental, social and governance high yield exchange-traded funds, following BlackRock’s iShares into the burgeoning market for investment products screened for sustainability. The French firm switched its investment grade ETF to follow a sustainable index last year, but opted to create a new product line for high yield.

US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Rostin Behnam has added his voice to the growing clamour for derivatives market participants to find a solution to fallback issues as they transition away from Libor.

Sam Woods, deputy governor at the Bank of England and chief executive of the Prudential Regulatory Authority, this week said he expects an equivalence agreement between the European Union and the UK to be extended beyond September, as both sides want to avoid a “dramatic” fallout.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association this week said it will make another attempt to finally find industry consensus on a solution to fallback issues in the Libor transition.

Société Générale grew revenues while keeping costs steady in its markets and investor services activities in the fourth quarter. Bondholders will have also welcomed a boost to the bank’s capital ratio.