Monica Damas-Shaw has joined the IHS Markit Securities Finance team in New York as a product manager, overseeing the firm’s solutions and services for beneficial owners in the Americas. She will manage an array of product management initiatives in step with the firm’s Securities Finance roadmap. With 20 years of experience in financial services, Damas-Shaw previously served as a vice president at JP Morgan, directing securities lending programs for major clients. Prior to this, she served as a vice president at Credit Suisse, managing institutional client relationships,...

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. announced that John Tuttle has been appointed Vice Chairman and Chief Commercial Officer of NYSE Group. In this expanded new role, Tuttle will lead commercial outreach and business development of NYSE Group, spearheading its efforts to win the largest IPOs, grow the exchange’s community of 2,300 listed companies, and oversee creation of new offerings for industries such as biotechnology and other growing sectors of the economy. Michael Blaugrund, currently Head of Transactions at the NYSE, has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer, overseeing...

Piper Jaffray Companies announced the sale of Advisory Research, Inc. through two separate transactions which will result in the firm exiting its traditional asset management business. It has signed a definitive agreement to sell the midstream energy business of Advisory Research, Inc. to Tortoise Capital Advisors. Piper Jaffray has also entered into a letter of intent to sell the remaining Advisory Research business to a partner group led by Matthew Swaim, managing director and executive committee chairman at Advisory Research. According to a story in MarketsMedia, Piper Jaffray expects to...

Refinitiv has announced a new deal to expand its coverage of Australian and New Zealand fixed income and interest rate derivatives markets. The data vendor will act as a global data distributor for Yieldbroker data and will be made available to users via the Elektron data platform or on desktops via the Eikon platform. Price data and analytics are sourced directly from Yieldbroker’s electronic trading platform which provides active liquidity across bonds, credit, interest rated derivatives, bank bills and repos, trading in excess of $2.75 trillion annually.

FIF CAT Working Group - FIF reviewed the draft of member recommendations on the CAT Web Portal, the proposed revisions to the CAT Industry Member Technical Specifications and an update on additional allowable symbols within the alphanumeric string.  FIF CAT Tech Spec Working Group - FIF recapped last week's call on Trade Busts. FIF continued the review of the CAT Industry Member Scenerios Document, beginning with section 2.4.3 (fill of a single customer order on an Average Price Basis).  FIF CAT Web Portal Review Subgroup - FIF presented our recommendations to the...

FIF met with Senior FINRA Staff on Wednesday, May 29th to discuss FINRA’s Proposed Pilot Program to Study Recommended Changes to Corporate Bond Block Trade Dissemination and FIF’s recent comments on FINRA Rule 4370 (BCP).

FIF Staff will be attending meetings at the SEC Offices on Tuesday, June 4th on the topics of CAT and SEC Rule 606.

FIF will be holding a Quarterly Event on Thursday, June 27th at OTC Markets (300 Vesey Street, New York, NY).  The event will focus upon the implementation of Amended SEC Rule 606.  To register for the event, please click here.

The banking industry is bent on taking over the nascent blockchain and cryptocurrency market. A group of financial firms led by UBS Group AG is eyeing blockchain technology for settling cross-border trades worldwide with its own “Bitcoin-like” token. The 14 firms – including Barclays, Nasdaq, Credit Suisse Group, Banco Santander, ING, and Lloyds Banking Group – have registered a new entity to control the development of the token, dubbed ‘utility settlement coin’ (or USC for short), The Wall Street Journal reports. The financial giants have...