FIF OFR Repo Reporting Working Group. FIF hosted two calls this past week for the OFR Repo Reporting Working Group. The Working Group continued its review and discussion of the documentation published by the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research (OFR) relating to reporting for repos that are executed bilaterally and not centrally-cleared (NCCBR repos). The Working Group reviewed and discussed a draft FIF letter to the OFR requesting clarification on various issues and questions relating to the implementation of this new reporting requirement. FIF Rule 605 Working Group. The...

Papara, the Turkish fintech, announced its partnership with DriveWealth, a financial technology platform providing Brokerage-as-a-Service. The partnership will provide Papara’s 20 million users with the ability to invest real-time in U.S. stocks on the Nasdaq and NYSE starting in October. Since 2020, the number of retail investors in Turkey has surged from 1.2 million to over 8 million. With DriveWealth’s fractional investing solution, Papara users will be able to buy or sell fractional shares in U.S. equities and ETFs, creating a new generation of empowered retail investors. 

Bloomberg Index Services Unveiled its Bloomberg FX Fixings (BFIX) offering, the first benchmark on a value T+1 basis in the market. The service will allow users to send FX orders into executing counterparts without being present in the time zone in question. Though sell-side banks offer this service via their forwards desk, the BFIX T+1 benchmark allows for a minimised impact on banks’ credit facilities when done at scale, according to Bloomberg. The initial launch extends to 20 deliverable currencies globally, including USD, GBP, HKD, EUR, and JPY among others.

BNY Mellon’s Pershing is integrating NetX360+, its custody platform and Wove, its wealth management platform to allow advisors to move seamlessly between the two. According to a story in MarketsMedia news, the firm recently reviewed its strategy and committed to interoperability and a multi-year investment to integrate NetX360+ and Wove. The firm expects the trends of consolidation, the growth of alternatives and the need for talent to persist, alongside the growth of model portfolios and direct indexing. As a result, the demand for high quality advice will increase, as will consumer...

Robinhood Markets, Inc. has entered into an agreement to acquire Bitstamp Ltd, a global cryptocurrency exchange. Bitstamp was founded in 2011 and has offices in Luxembourg, the UK, Slovenia, Singapore, and the US. Acquiring a global exchange will significantly accelerate Robinhood Crypto’s expansion worldwide. Bitstamp holds over 50 active licenses and registrations globally and will bring in customers across the EU, UK, US and Asia to Robinhood according to a story in MarketsMedia news. This acquisition will introduce Robinhood’s first institutional business. Bitstamp has been trusted by...

FIF has scheduled two calls this week for the OFR Repo Reporting Working Group. The first call will be on Monday June 3 at 1 pm ET; the second call will be on Thursday June 6 at 1 pm ET. The agenda for the calls will be to continue the review and discussion of the documentation published by the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research (OFR) relating to reporting for repos that are executed bilaterally and not centrally-cleared (NCCBR repos). The Working Group will also review a draft letter to the OFR requesting guidance on various implementation questions and issues.

FIF has scheduled a call for the Securities Lending Transparency Working Group for Monday June 3 at 2 pm ET. Ignacio Sandoval of the Orrick law firm will complete his review of the FINRA rule filing for the SLATE reporting system. The Working Group will also review and discuss the Participant Specification for SLATE recently published by FINRA.

FIF has scheduled an additional call this week for the CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group. The call will be on Tuesday June 4 at 1 pm ET and will focus on reviewing and discussing a draft FIF exemptive request to the SEC relating to linkage of representative to customer orders and linkage of order fulfillments to representative and principal orders. This call will be in addition to the regularly-scheduled weekly call for the CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group, which will be on Wednesday June 5 at 2 pm ET. The next call for the CAT CAIS Working Group will be on Wednesday June 5 at...

FIF has scheduled the next call for the Rule 605 Working Group for Tuesday June 4 at 3 pm ET. The Working Group will continue its review and discussion of a draft FIF comment letter to the SEC relating to implementation of the changes to Rule 605 that the SEC adopted on March 6.