FICC Markets Standards
Regulations can only take us so far in improving our markets. Industry Standards to cope with conflicts of interest are therefore being created by the FMSB and backed by all large market players. Swap-pricing tied to the issuance of new bonds is a complex area that the FMSB is creating Standards for. We take a […]
Swaps Regulations Are Changing – Part Two, Capital and CCPs
What You Need To Know Swaps Regulation 2.0 is a whitepaper that was presented by Chairman of the CFTC, Christopher Giancarlo, at the annual ISDA AGM. The paper sets out 6 broad areas of reform for Swaps markets. We looked at (1) Trade Execution and (2) Trade Reporting in Part One. This week, we look at […]
Swaps Regulations Are Changing – Part One, SEFs
What You Need to Know Last week, the CFTC Chairman, Christopher Giancarlo, presented a whitepaper at the annual ISDA shindig. This whitepaper should be a pretty good guide for any regulatory changes that we can expect to see out of the CFTC for the remainder of his term (it expires in April 2019). He looked […]
Segregated Funds, Market Crashes & Under-Seg
Today I want to look briefly at the reported solvency of FCM’s during the most recent market panic. Back on February 5th of this year, the US equities market suffered a volatile day and significant losses. The Dow Jones index had its worst ever one-day loss in terms of points (down 1,175), and other indices […]
OCC Quarterly Report on Bank Derivatives Activities
Our regular readers will know that the Clarus Blog focuses on Derivatives and the new regulations introduced after the Financial Crisis of 2007-08. The massive increase in availability of data on OTC Derivatives markets is of great interest to us. However at times we are guilty of not paying enough attention to older data sources. […]
Bank Ring Fencing – What You Need to Know
Ring-fencing splits banks into deposit-taking institutions and investment banks. There is more than one way that this can be achieved. The European Commission has decided against ring-fencing. Large UK banks are required to ring-fence their deposit-taking operations from January 2019. The US may include some ring-fencing proposals as they look at financial reforms. Why Do […]
Capital and RWA for European Banks
Following on from my recent Capital Ratios and Risk Weighted Assets for Tier 1 US Banks article I wanted to look at the equivalent metrics from European Banks. Background One of the lessons learned from the Great Financial Crisis was that Banks were generally under capitalised commensurate to their risk exposure, leading to new Basel III regulations […]
Capital Ratios and Risk Weighted Assets for Tier 1 US Banks
Following on from my recent Supplementary Leverage Ratio: Comparing US Banks article I wanted to look at Capital Ratios and Risk Weighted Assets (RWAs) published by the six largest US banks. Background One of the lessons learned from the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) was that Banks were generally under-capitalised for the risks they were exposed, leading to new […]
Supplementary Leverage Ratio: Comparing US Banks
In my recent Basel III Leverage Ratio article I provided an introduction to this important new metric and today I will look at the Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR) disclosures published by the six largest US banks. Background An underlying cause of the global financial crisis was the build-up of excessive on- and off-balance sheet leverage in banks which apparently still […]
Basel III Leverage Ratio
The Basel III Leverage Ratio, often referred to as the Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR), is one of the important new metrics introduced as a response to the Financial Crisis of 2007-08 and one which continues to receive a lot of press coverage and discussion. In this article I will provide an overview and some of the […]