Securities Industry News articles from August 2004

Securities Industry News archives from August 2004

Stop the Opt-Out?
August 9, 2004... The New York Stock Exchange last Monday submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission its long-awaited proposal to upgrade the NYSE Direct+ auto-execution system, which would propel the 212-year-old institution into the digital age. ...

Canadian Consensus: Same-Day Matching.(Canadian Securities Administrators)
August 9, 2004... Like their counterparts in the United States, Canadian market players want a phased approach to trade-date matching of securities transactions and do not endorse mandating the use of a central matching service. That was the overwhelming...

Is Transparency Protection?
August 9, 2004... The question regarding the newly invigorated, government-mandated auditing of dealer price reporting in the bond markets is whether the regulators-which are privy to more bond pricing data than they are publicly disseminating-will adequately...

Continuity Plans Continue.
August 9, 2004... Last week's terror alert issued by the U.S. government for the financial services industry highlighted both the ongoing threat to our nation's security and the continuing importance of business continuity planning for institutions in our...

Fear and Loathing on Wall Street.
August 9, 2004... In his now-famous speech in Oliver Stone's movie Wall Street, Gordon Gecko explained the core mechanism that drives markets toward greater efficiency: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies,...

LSE Keeps Many Balls in the Air.
August 9, 2004... Given the competition between major stock markets, it's not surprising that the London Stock Exchange marked the opening of its new building by unveiling the world's tallest piece of kinetic sculpture. Housed in the atrium of the...

EU Steps Into Exchange Fracas.(Brief Article)
August 9, 2004... There is certainly no love lost between Euronext and the London Stock Exchange. The battle for control of Liffe, won by Euronext in 2001, has more recently spilled over into Amsterdam, where both exchanges have been battling for the business of...

Morgan Unit Feels ID Pressure.(Morgan Stanley Capital International)
August 9, 2004... The industry debate over whether securities identification numbers are proprietary or in the public domain has been rekindled, with Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) recently telling its clients that it would no longer automatically...

Treasury Faces Taxing Issues on Swaps.
August 9, 2004... About a decade after the introduction of credit default swaps, the U.S. Treasury Department now wants to decide whether cross-border payments to a foreign entity in over-the-counter transactions should be subject to withholding tax-a decision...

ASX and OM: Next Stop, Back Office?
August 9, 2004... A proposed extension of activities by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) on the back of a partnership with OM to implement the technology provider's integrated derivatives and equities trading platform, Click-XT, has raised the possibility...

Italy Weighs Costs, Benefits of Settlement System.
August 9, 2004... About seven months after the launch of Italy's new settlement system, Express II, doubts have arisen about whether the resultant reduction in systemic risk is worth the operational challenges and expenses involved. Everyone believes that...

The Message is the Medium in Forex.
August 9, 2004... The migration of foreign exchange trading to electronic platforms guaranteed that the search for a data transport protocol for the market would be a hot-button issue for years to come. But because that migration has been gradual, the deployment...

Spotlight Shines on New Issues.
August 9, 2004... While the new-issue space is likely the most lucrative-and last-piece of Wall Street's bread-and-butter businesses to automate, the computers are turning on in all sorts of ways lately. The momentum is coming not only from Google's...

On The Record.
August 9, 2004... "These are significant institutions that relate to our leadership role in the international economy, but...the destruction of a single building is not going to undermine the greatest and strongest economy in the world.... The financial services...

Trading Scandal Grows: Data from Lipper show market timing in variable annuities may dwarf mutual fund scandal.
August 23, 2004... Already under attack for questionable fees and sales practices, variable annuities are about to get another jolt of unwelcome attention. In mid-August, when the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer...

Fair Access and Block Trading.
August 23, 2004... With so much interest devoted to the trade-through debate, market participants have paid little attention to one Regulation NMS proposal that could change electronic block-trading and affect some large institutional investors. The...

BCP Execs Ready for Gridlock.
August 23, 2004... Congestion and commuting difficulties wrought by the arrival of the Republican National Convention later this month, and associated potential disruptions from protestors and "anarchists" rank ahead of potential terror strikes on the list of...

Santayana, Gandalf, the SEC.
August 23, 2004... In 1905, the philosopher George Santayana wrote arguably the most famous line regarding the study of history: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But remembering history, let alone its lessons, can be a formidable...

Bermuda Mulls More Hedge Fund Regulation.
August 23, 2004... Low-tax jurisdictions once lured hedge funds to their shores by promising a light hand, if any, on oversight. But as investors demand more transparency and disclosure from these private investment pools, some offshore financial centers are...

Institutional Order Flow: Eye of the Storm.(Excerpt)
August 23, 2004... Even with the bevy of improvements in the trading process garnered by electronic platforms, inefficiencies remain. In particular, even as regulators, the press and market participants themselves have focused on the retail investor, those on the...

BSA Filings to Go Electronic.
August 23, 2004... FinCEN, the financial crimes enforcement network, an arm of the Treasury Department, has begun the development of BSA Direct, a Web-based data warehouse designed to give law enforcement agencies access to reports that may be used during money...

SEC's Transfer-Agency Plan Elicits Debate.
August 23, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission's proposal to ban shareholder recordkeeping agents from servicing issuers that restrict how share ownership can be transferred has stirred some debate between broker dealers and independent transfer agents...

On The Record.(Brief Article)
August 23, 2004... "The issue here is, are their incentives aligned with yours? Are they eating what they are cooking?" Mercer Bullard, a securities law professor in Mississippi and a former attorney in the SEC's Division of Investment Management, on the SEC's...