State Street Global Advisors and Galaxy Asset Management have unveiled a new collaboration aimed at bringing investors digital asset-based strategies, offering key exposure to companies involved in the digital asset space. According to a story in The Trade news, the agreement, which aims to move beyond cryptocurrencies and bitcoin, will see the two firms provide investors with access to the $2.4 trillion digital asset landscape through manager-directed strategies. With growing interest in digital assets from both institutional and retail traders as a result of spot bitcoin ETFs, investors...

Asia-based insurance giant AIA Group has selected BNY and BlackRock to provide a front-to-back investment platform, supporting the firm’s long-term investment program. According to a story in The Trade news, the agreement will see AIA implement BlackRock’s end-to-end investment management and operations platform Aladdin, alongside BNY’s specialized investment operations and data management services technology – together providing AIA with an end-to-end solution with enhanced data and analytics capability. BNY and BlackRock first agreed on a strategic partnership back in 2019, with a view to...

Cboe Europe has confirmed plans for the launch of its new volume weighted average price (VWAP) crossing service for equities at the end of this year. According to a story in The Trade news, the VWAP-X service will be made available through block trading platform Cboe BIDS Europe and will give users a greater chance of sourcing and matching liquidity at a forward benchmark price. It will utilize BIDS’ conditional trade negotiation and execution workflow to match orders based on a standard and exchange-regulated VWAP methodology. Participants will be able to submit conditional VWAP...

Eurex has launched the Trade Offset workflow, which helps users of cleared Interest Rate Swaps to optimize their portfolio by automating the close out process. The solution seamlessly connects Bloomberg’s electronic trading tools to the original Eurex trade record. According to a story in Markets Media news, clients who need to close out a swap position at the Central Counterparty Clearing House (CCP) can retrieve their trade details by inputting the Eurex CCP ID into Bloomberg’s trade register, TREG <GO>. The original swap details are then pulled directly from Eurex into this...

BNP Paribas entered into an agreement with Mistral AI to provide access to current and future Mistral AI commercial models across all the bank’s business lines. It follows a relationship dating back to September 2023 when the Global Markets division of BNP Paribas began experimenting with Mistral AI’s models. This first engagement produced strong results and, according to a story in Markets Media news, BNP Paribas extended the collaboration to the wider Group starting February 2024. Since that time, BNP Paribas has been extensively piloting Mistral AI commercial models across...

On July 2, FIF submitted an exemption request letter to the SEC relating to CAT representative order linkage. The letter requests an exemption from the requirements that an industry member report linkage between (A) (i) a representative order or IDQS quote and (ii) a customer order, and (B) (i) an order fulfillment for a customer and (ii) a representative or principal order or IDQS quote, for specified scenarios. FIF would like to thank the members of the CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group for their contributions in the drafting of this exemption request letter.

FIF has scheduled a call for the Securities Lending Transparency Working Group for Monday July 8 at 2 pm ET. The Working Group will continue its review and discussion of the SLATE Participant Specification published by FINRA.

The next call for the OFR Repo Reporting Working Group will be on Tuesday July 9 at 11 am ET. The Working Group will review and discuss a draft supplemental letter to the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research relating to implementation of the new requirement to report non-centrally cleared bilateral repos. The Working Group will also review and discuss a draft matrix with cross-border reporting scenarios.

FIF has scheduled a call for the Short Sales / Reg SHO / Short Reporting Working Group for Tuesday July 9 at 2 pm ET. The Working Group will discuss various clarifications requested by the SEC in response to the letter submitted by FIF to the SEC on June 24 relating to the implementation of short position reporting.