| July 25, 2022 | "Irreverent, but never irrelevant" | | | | John Lothian
Publisher
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Hits & Takes
John Lothian & JLN Staff
It was 27 years ago today that my wife showed incredible market awareness and called me right after the 3:15 p.m. stock index market close to tell me she was in labor with our first son, that her water had broken and I should come home directly. I bolted right out of the office to the train station and arrived home as quickly as I could. A quick trip to the doctor's office confirmed her suspicions, however, the baby was breech and we were headed to the hospital for an emergency Cesarean section. When Timothy James Lothian came into the world, it was butt first, so his first official act in this world was to moon the doctor. And that is all you need to know about Tim and his sense of humor. I drove home that evening, after Tim came into the world, with tears of joy in my eyes. My life would never be the same and has only gotten better.
David Prosperi did not stay "retired" very long. He has been named as executive vice president and managing director of KemperLesnik, a Chicago-based public relations, brand activation and events agency. Prosperi will oversee the public relations and content businesses for KemperLesnik and report to CEO Steve Skinner, the son of Sam Skinner, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation and White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush. Congratulations to David on his new position. I hope he still has time to be on our advisory committee.
Today we have a video in The Path to Electronic Trading video series from JLN and MarketsWiki Education that features the story of Mark Smith, a founder of the Nextrade ECN and MatchboxFX electronic foreign currency platform, who today is involved in the crypto world. In part one of our two part interview he talks about being recruited to Raymond James because of his competitive swimming background, but then pivoting into a career of perpetual entrepreneurship.
I have a correction from last week. Ralph Goldenberg passed away early Monday morning at 4:45 a.m., not on Sunday as earlier reported by JLN. We apologize for the error.
Have a great day and stay safe and treat people the same way you want to be treated: with respect, equality and justice.~JJL
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Mark Smith's Path to Electronic Trading is Awash in Entrepreneurial Drive
JohnLothianNews.com
The Path to Electronic Trading for Mark Smith started in a pool. He wanted to be an Olympic swimmer, a singular focus that took him to the Olympic trials of 1988 and 1992, but not to the Olympic Games, though he did swim in the Pan American games of 1991.
That competitive drive earned him a job with Raymond James as a junior investment banker in Florida; however, a client quickly told him his future was as an entrepreneur. So Smith embarked on his first start-up, a day trading shop.
Watch the video »
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How Chicago came to love the Italian beef sandwich
Scott Simon and Danny Hensel - NPR
Chicago is rich with iconic foods. There's the classic Chicago hot dog, with just about everything on it EXCEPT ketchup. There's deep dish pizza. There's barbeque, flaming saganaki, chicken Vesuvio, and cheese and caramel popcorn. And, of course, there's the Italian beef sandwich. A new FX series called The Bear has shone a spotlight on the dish. The show is about a fine dining chef who returns home to Chicago to manage his family's Italian beef shop. Like any great series, there's the drama, comedy and pathos — but there's also the food: thinly sliced beef, sweet peppers, a pickled vegetable relish called Giardiniera, all stuffed into an Italian loaf and topped au jus.
/jlne.ws/3Bhbdpm
***** Outside of Chicago, it is not the same.~JJL
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Laughter Is a Weapon Putin Can't Fire Back
Humor helps people tolerate repressive regimes. Can satire and the mischievous Masyanya help keep defiance alive in Russia?
Clara Ferreira Marques - Bloomberg
Dictators are rarely funny. Even ones who cultivate bare-chested, bear-hugging personas and have a penchant for extra-long tables. In more than 20 years of watching Russian President Vladimir Putin, I can't recall him laughing spontaneously, or cracking a joke — certainly not a memorable one. Perhaps because there's nothing amusing about repression, violence or war waged on a peaceful neighbor.
/jlne.ws/3PRBH4B
****** Forget HIMARS, try old-fashioned HUMORS.~JJL
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Calling In Sick or Going on Vacation, Workers Aren't Showing Up This Summer; Employers struggle with staffing as high Covid-19 infection rates, a longstanding labor shortage and vacation season converge
Lauren Weber, Chip Cutter - WSJ
This summer is proving to be a season of staffing headaches. A rise in Covid-19 absences in recent weeks amid the spread of the BA.5 subvariant, combined with planned time off, has left restaurants, hotel chains, manufacturers and other workplaces struggling to keep operations running this summer. At some companies, bosses say, staffing is harder now than at any previous stage in the pandemic. For the period from June 29 to July 11, 3.9 million Americans said they didn't work because they were sick with Covid-19 or were caring for someone with it, according to Census Bureau data. In the comparable period last year, 1.8 million people missed work for those reasons.
/jlne.ws/3ovmbzY
***** Get used to slow service. It is the new normal.~JJL
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Downtown Chicago is awash in summer tourists. But a key driver of retail activity is missing: office workers.
Brian J. Rogal - Chicago Tribune
Billy Cavada fits Michael Bonamarte for a jacket at Syd Jerome, a luxury men's clothing shop in the Central Loop, on Wednesday, July 20. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune) Tourists have returned to Chicago's downtown this summer, and anyone looking at the crowds thronging Millennium Park, the Riverwalk and stores on Michigan Avenue might think the city's pandemic crisis is past. But "For Rent" signs still cover many downtown storefronts, and office workers remain scarce, which means fewer customers for Loop retailers.
/jlne.ws/3BdX9Na
****** At least the tourists are back. ~JJL
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Friday's Top Three
Our top story Friday was The US's first crypto insider-trading case could mean serious trouble for Coinbase, from Quartz. Second was Citadel's Miami Tower Offers a Chance to Put Stamp on Waterfront, from Bloomberg. Third was Don't Call it a Swap: The CFTC Asserts Jurisdiction Where it Shouldn't, a commentary from Jones Day.
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MarketsWiki Stats
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MarketsWiki Statistics
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| All MarketsWiki Sponsors» | | | | | | | John Lothian News (JLN) is the news division of John J. Lothian & Company, Inc. (JJLCO). The online media and financial services firm is staffed by derivatives industry, journalism and technology professionals. | | | | | | | John Lothian News Editorial Staff: | | | John Lothian
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| Lead Stories | Global shortage of fibre optic cable threatens digital growth; Rising prices of critical components cast shadow over 5G rollout and development of data centres
Anna Gross - FT
A worldwide shortage of fibre optic cable has driven up prices and lengthened lead times, endangering companies' ambitious plans to roll out state of the art telecommunications infrastructure. Europe, India and China are among the regions most affected by the crunch, with prices for fibre rising by up to 70 per cent from record lows in March 2021, from $3.70 to $6.30 per fibre km, according to Cru Group, a market intelligence firm. Although the pandemic prompted some of the biggest tech and telecoms groups to slash their capex, there has been a surge in demand for internet and data services, leading to a shortfall in availability of the crucial but often overlooked material.
/jlne.ws/3RYRS20
SEC Will Need to Prove Tokens Are Securities in Coinbase Insider-Trading Case, Legal Expert Says
Fran Velasquez - CoinDesk
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will need to prove the tokens listed on the Coinbase crypto exchange are securities for it to pursue its current insider-trading case against a former Coinbase product manager and his associates, according to a former persecutor. Ian McGinley, now a partner at the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, told CoinDesk TV's "First Mover" Friday that the SEC couldn't have filed the case unless the tokens in question are securities. "They don't have a wire fraud statute like the DOJ does," McGinley said, referring to wire fraud charges issued by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday. McGinley, who served more for more than a decade as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, noted the Justice Department can sidestep the debate of whether the tokens are securities.
/jlne.ws/3BeD8WF
How London Paid a Record Price to Dodge a Blackout; The UK heat wave also saw an unhappy benchmark in the energy crisis.
Javier Blas - Bloomberg
Last week, unbeknown to many outside the power industry, parts of London came remarkably close to a blackout — even as it was recovering from the hottest day in British history. On July 20, surging electricity demand collided with a bottleneck in the grid, leaving the eastern part of the British capital briefly short of power. Only by paying a record high £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt hour — more than 5,000% higher than the typical price — did the UK avoid homes and businesses going dark. That was the nosebleed cost to persuade Belgium to crank up aging electricity plants to send energy across the English Channel.
/jlne.ws/3J5JfhT
ED&F Man to Quit LME Trading Floor, Keep Status as Clearing Broker
Mark Burton - Bloomberg
ED&F Man Capital Markets Ltd. will cease trading on the London Metal Exchange's trading floor next week, while retaining its status as a clearing broker, the bourse said in a notice to members. The brokerage had been planning the move ahead of a planned sale to Marex, which runs a rival floor-trading business, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.
/jlne.ws/3OroD4U
Monkeypox: WHO declares highest alert over outbreak
Robert Plummer - BBC News
The classification is the highest alert that the WHO can issue and follows a worldwide upsurge in cases. It came at the end of the second meeting of the WHO's emergency committee on the virus. More than 16,000 cases have now been reported from 75 countries, said WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. There had been five deaths so far as a result of the outbreak, he added. There are only two other such health emergencies at present - the coronavirus pandemic and the continuing effort to eradicate polio. Dr Tedros said the emergency committee had been unable to reach a consensus on whether the monkeypox outbreak should be classified as a global health emergency.
/jlne.ws/3S9HXH4
Crypto: A Bernie Madoff-Style Scheme May Have Crushed Prominent Lenders; Most financially troubled crypto lenders have one thing in common: hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
The Street
An unprecedented crisis of confidence has affected the crypto industry for several months. The fall of the two digital currencies was caused by the fact that many investors wanted to liquidate their positions at the same time. A month later, the crypto lender Celsius Network, which operates like a bank, announced that it was suspending withdrawals, thus preventing its customers from having access to their money.
/jlne.ws/3BgKrgG
The crypto boom runs on hype men like 'BitBoy,' an untrained Atlanta YouTuber; Ben Armstrong is one of a handful of influencers who have gained huge followings by offering advice on cryptocurrency. Critics say it's a profession riddled with ignorance, conflict and moral hazards.
Steven Zeitchik - The Washington Post
When the bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius began foundering last month, Ben Armstrong was among the industry personalities leading the online charge against the firm. "You can't possibly EVER support Celsius Network or [CEO Alex] Mashinsky in any way," Armstrong, who goes by the moniker Bitboy_Crypto, told his nearly 900,000 Twitter followers after Celsius froze all depositors' money in June. There was only one problem: Armstrong had been central to encouraging them to deposit their money with Celsius in the first place.
/jlne.ws/3ovoqDj
They Thought 'Crypto Banks' Were Safe, and Then Came the Crash; Crypto firms such as Celsius and Voyager pitched themselves as good alternatives to traditional lenders
Rachel Louise Ensign and Angel Au-Yeung - WSJ
One Sunday evening last month, Lucas Holcomb woke his pregnant wife. "Honey, we just lost $100,000," he told her. Mr. Holcomb had taken out a home-equity line of credit and deposited the proceeds with cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network LLC, which offered banklike accounts paying far higher rates than traditional lenders. He liked that the company had big-name institutional investors and touted safeguards meant to protect depositors from the crazy price swings common in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
/jlne.ws/3RXIbRg
Could China Be Headed for a Lehman-Style Crisis? This Property Bust Is Different.
Reshma Kapadia - Barron's
China's property slump and suffering economy is leading some to wonder if China could be on the brink of its own Lehman-style crisis. While the troubles facing China's economy are substantial, it's unlikely to push China into the type of meltdown that sends the country's financial system into a tailspin. The debt that has fueled China's property boom—and as a result its economic growth—has long been a source of concern for long-term investors. They aren't alone: Chinese policy makers had been trying to tackle the debt in its economy—a reason they were much more restrained in providing Covid-related stimulus in 2020 and the reason for the property crackdown that sparked the current slump.
/jlne.ws/3J0odBz
Bankman-Fried's FTX Makes Proposal for Bankrupt Voyager With Eye on Customers; Customers would get opportunity to start an account with FTX; Alameda would write off its own loan claim under proposal
Yueqi Yang and Hannah Miller - Bloomberg
Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is proposing a restructuring deal to Voyager Digital LLC with the goal of attracting customers from the bankrupt digital-asset platform. Under a two-way proposal announced Friday, Alameda, Bankman-Fried's trading firm, would buy all Voyager digital assets and digital asset loans, other than loans to Three Arrows Capital, in cash at market value. Meanwhile, FTX, his crypto exchange, will offer customers of Voyager an option to receive their share of claims by opening a new account at FTX. The offer is currently non-binding and has not been accepted by Voyager. A spokesperson for Voyager declined to comment.
/jlne.ws/3S0JKhg
Voyager Responds to FTX's Offer, Calling It a 'Low-Ball' Bid; Sam Bankman-Fried's firms made proposal to buy Voyager assets; Bid is 'dressed up as a white knight rescue,' filing says
Yueqi Yang - Bloomberg
Crypto platform Voyager Digital LLC said a joint offer proposed by FTX and Alameda is a "low-ball bid" that disrupts the bankruptcy process, according to a court filing. On Friday, crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried proposed a restructuring deal to Voyager publicly. Under the plan, Alameda, Bankman-Fried's trading firm, would buy all of Voyager's digital assets and digital asset loans, other than loans to Three Arrows Capital, in cash at market value. Meanwhile, FTX, his crypto exchange, would offer customers of Voyager an option to receive their share of claims by opening a new account at FTX.
/jlne.ws/3PWQNpL
Voyager: 'No Customer Will Be Made Whole' Under FTX Proposal
Sam Reynolds - Coindesk
Lawyers representing bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital have responded to a proposal by FTX to offer early liquidity to Voyager customers by calling it a "low-ball bid dressed up as a white knight rescue" that only benefits FTX. In a court filing, Voyager's lawyers said the plan "transfers significant value to AlamedaFTX, and completely eliminates the value of assets that are of no interest to AlamedaFTX."
/jlne.ws/3ztxBdA
The FBI says it busted a big crypto Ponzi scam. It just got bigger.; The crypto platform promised investors returns of at least 5 percent every week. A receiver found otherwise.
Michelle Singletary - The Washington Post
We are in an age where investors are duped into believing they can become millionaires by sinking their money into cryptocurrency-related companies or platforms. Scammers are capitalizing on the crypto craze big time. Since the start of 2021, Americans have lost more than $1 billion to cryptocurrency scams, nearly 60 times the losses reported in 2018, according to the Federal Trade Commission. A company called EminiFX claimed it had developed a proprietary trading system that would invest people's money in cryptocurrency and the foreign exchange markets, also known as forex. When the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed complaints against a suspected Ponzi scheme by the company, they believed the swindle amounted to $59 million. But that turned out to be a gross underestimate, according to a preliminary report filed by David Castleman, a partner at Raines Feldman in New York, who has been appointed receiver for EminiFX.
/jlne.ws/3osXMeo
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| Ukraine Invasion | | News about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and its military, economic, political and humanitarian impact | Zelenskiy says Ukraine unbowed, even Russians expect defeat
Reuters
After five months of Russian attacks, Ukraine will continue to do all it can to inflict as much damage on its enemy as possible, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Sunday. "Even the occupiers admit we will win," he said as he hailed the upcoming day of Ukrainian statehood, July 28, a new annual holiday that Zelenskiy announced in August last year. "We hear it in their conversations all the time. In what they are telling their relatives when they call them."
/jlne.ws/3PzMQHs
Ukraine's neighbor worried about Russian invasion; "This is a risk," Prime Minister Natalia Gavrili?
David Cohen - Politico
Moldova's prime minister said in an interview that aired Sunday that her nation fears an invasion by Russia in the wake of its invasion of their mutual neighbor Ukraine. "We are worried, of course," Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita said on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS." "This is a risk, it's a hypothetical scenario for now, but if the military actions move further into the southwestern part of Ukraine and toward Odesa, then of course, we are very worried." Moldova, which shares a border with Ukraine, became an independent state when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, but it has never been able to fully remove itself from Russia's sphere of influence, nor build a vital economy on its own. The World Factbook of the CIA says, "Despite recent progress, Moldova remains one of the poorest countries in Europe."
/jlne.ws/3cEYVMY
Ukraine wants more 'game-changer' HIMARS. The U.S. says it's complicated.; The agile, precision-launch rocket systems are helping Ukraine fend off Russian artillery attacks in the east
Isabelle Khurshudyan, Karen DeYoung, Alex Horton and Karoun Demirjian - The Washington Post
If only they had more, and more sophisticated, weapons from the West, Ukrainian officials often tell their American counterparts and anyone else who will listen, they could make short work of Russian invaders. Last month's arrival of the first of what are now a dozen U.S. multiple-launch precision rocket systems, known as HIMARS, has already been a game changer, soldiers here said this week. Since a recent HIMARS strike on an enemy ammunition depot in Izyum, located southeast of Ukraine's second-largest city Kharkiv, Russian shelling has been "10 times less" than before, said Bohdan Dmytruk, a battalion commander in Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade.
/jlne.ws/3b0Zhx4
Why does the world need grain to be shipped from Ukraine?
BBC News
About 20m tonnes of grain meant for export are trapped in the country. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said this could rise to 75m tonnes after this year's harvest. The war also means that this year's harvest will be smaller. As much as 30% of the 86m tonnes of grain Ukraine normally produces will not be harvested, says Laura Wellesley, a food security specialist at think tank Chatham House. Ukraine is usually the world's fourth-largest grain exporter. It normally produces 42% of the world's sunflower oil, 16% of its maize and 9% of its wheat.
/jlne.ws/3OrpIcY
Russia's Natural-Gas Game Comes With Economic Risks; High energy prices have swollen Russia's coffers for now, but any loss of European gas revenues in years to come will be hard to replace
Georgi Kantchev and Paul Hannon - WSJ
Russian President Vladimir Putin can afford to cut off natural-gas exports to Europe thanks to ample revenues from other commodities, but such a move would come with longer-term risks for Russia's sanctions-stricken economy and its prolific energy industry. Earlier this week, Moscow resumed gas supplies via the Nord Stream pipeline after annual maintenance ended, easing worries in Europe that Mr. Putin would further crimp exports at a time when the continent is filling up its storage ahead of winter.
/jlne.ws/3RSnINX
As Ukraine pounds Russian targets, U.S. sends more artillery; More than 100 'high-value' military targets have been hit, including command posts, ammunition depots and radar sites, a senior U.S. defense official said.
Dan Lamothe - The Washington Post
U.S. officials said Friday that they will send additional sophisticated artillery systems and ammunition to Ukraine, bolstering the country's forces again as they carry out a coordinated campaign of strikes on Russian military targets. The latest $270 million package includes four M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, boosting the total number the United States has provided Kyiv to 16, said John Kirby, a White House spokesman.
/jlne.ws/3J6gPEQ
Russian missiles hit Ukraine port; Kyiv says it is still preparing grain exports
Natalia Zinets - Reuters
Russian missiles hit Ukraine's southern port of Odesa on Saturday, the Ukrainian military said, threatening a deal signed just a day earlier to unblock grain exports from Black Sea ports and ease global food shortages caused by the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the strike blatant "barbarism" showing Moscow could not be trusted to implement the deal.
/jlne.ws/3OsgoW9
Russia-Ukraine Grain Deal Won't Translate Into Big Exports Immediately; Clearing ports will take time, and Ukrainian farmers are dealing with all sorts of other problems affecting sales
Alistair MacDonald and Will Horner - WSJ
The deal between Moscow and Kyiv to allow for the export of Ukrainian grain is helping push global prices lower, but it won't translate into a slug of new exports soon. Wheat prices fell Friday, as the deal raised hopes that a restart to Ukrainian grain exports would ease a brewing global food-supply crisis.
/jlne.ws/3z873gC
Kremlin Says Gas Flows Depend on Nord Stream Turbine Turnover; Siemens is aware of equipment issues at Nord Stream: Peskov; Russia 'not interested' in cutting off gas to Europe: Kremlin
Bloomberg News
Flows of Russian natural gas to Europe via the Nord Stream link will depend on how quickly the pipeline equipment is repaired and returned to Gazprom PJSC, a Kremlin spokesman said, as governments and businesses watch for any signals on the future of supplies.
/jlne.ws/3PPUH3x
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| Exchanges, OTC & Clearing | | Top news from exchanges, clearing, settlement and trade execution facilities | CME Group Announces Record Copper Options Open Interest
CME Group
CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, today announced that open interest in Copper options surpassed 100,000 contracts on July 21, 2022, reaching an all-time record after multiple back-to-back open interest record days throughout the week. "Seen as a bellwether for the global economy, market users are turning to our Copper options to manage risk as expectations for an economic slowdown continue to increase," said Jin Chang, Global Head of Metals at CME Group. "Our clients clearly value the defined risk/reward structure of our Copper options that provide an effective way to manage adverse price movements, as reflected in recent volume and open interest. We look forward to continuing to provide enhanced solutions across global base metals markets."
/bit.ly/3Oxxl1D
TAIFEX OTC central clearing business opened on July 25th, leading the OTC derivatives market in Taiwan to a new milestone
TAIFEX
In order to strengthen the stability of the financial market and gear to international regulatory standards, Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) launched the OTC central clearing business on July 25, 2022. OTC derivatives are transactions that do not trade on an exchange, usually executed through negotiation between financial institutions, or by brokers as intermediaries, using the telephone or Internet to request quotations and reach a consensus on the terms of the transaction. In general, OTC derivative products are more complex, with greater financial leverage, and market participants are interconnected with each other. When one market participant defaults, it may trigger a chain reaction and affect the stability of the financial market, just like what happened in the 2008 financial crisis. Through central clearing, market participants can transfer the default risk to TAIFEX. The original obligation between the buyer and seller will become obligations between TAIFEX and the buyer, and TAIFEX and the seller. Participants no longer have to face multiple counterparties with different risk profiles. They can just deal with one single counterparty - the TAIFEX. Thus their risk management operations can be simplified and costs can be reduced.
/bit.ly/3PU1wkM
Taiwan Futures Exchange held the opening ceremony of the OTC derivatives clearing business: The Premier of the Executive Yuan and other high-profile professionals and executives from the financial industry attended to witness the milestone moment in the OTC derivatives market
TAIFEX
To reduce systematic risks, strengthen the resilience of the financial system and gradually promote the central clearing of the massive OTC derivatives market, Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) launched the OTC derivatives clearing business on July 25th and held an opening ceremony at the Grand Hotel Taipei. The Premier of the Executive Yuan, Su Tseng-chang, the Minister without Portfolio and Spokesperson of the Executive Yuan, Lo Ping-cheng, the Chairperson of the Financial Supervisory Commission, Huang Tien-mu, the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of China, Yen Tzung-ta, representatives from foreign organizations stationed in Taiwan, including the American Institute in Taiwan, the British Office Taipei, and the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan, the European Chamber Of Commerce Taiwan and other high-profile professionals and executives from the financial industry jointly attended to witness the milestone moment of the Taiwan futures market.
/bit.ly/3oy9Meg
The countdown is on for Sporttrade. The Philadelphia-based sports betting exchange is in the final stages of preparations for its initial launch. Come September, the company, founded by Chair and CEO Alex Kane, plans to be live in New Jersey.
Steve Bittenbender - Casino.org
The company was established in 2018, and last year, it secured $36 million in funding to grow its team, gain market access to other states, and invest in its workforce. Among the investors taking part in that round included former MGM Resorts International Chairman and CEO Jim Murren and former Nasdaq Stock Exchange CEO Tom Wittman. Wittman also holds a seat on Sporttrade's Board of Directors.
/bit.ly/3yXUPXW
United States: The Joint Audit Committee In The Post-Archegos Risk Management Landscape
Stephen R. Morris - Mondaq
Regulators—including the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Joint Audit Committee—are increasingly focusing on the terms and conditions of account agreements under which banks, broker-dealers and futures commission merchants' contract with their customers, and in particular on terms and conditions relating to limits, the right to call for margin, limited recourse, and grace periods that may toll the right to exercise remedies upon a default. This focus derives from legitimate risk management concerns. The market crash in March 2020 and the ensuing weeks of volatility, and then, a year later, the default of Archegos Capital Management, spurred regulatory and supervisory assessments and reviews of risk management practices across the industry.
/bit.ly/3cEZGpw
The path to better futures; Suspending agri-derivative contracts to control price-rise not only affects investment in the development of a robust agri-market, but also makes India a price-taker in the global stage instead of becoming a price-setter
Arun Raste - Financial Express
As we observe Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, it is relevant to look at the journey of one of the most ambitious post-Independence agri-reforms—the derivatives market and the setting up of commodities exchanges. Indian agri-marketing, having been through multiple troughs and crests, has always derived hope nd optimism from the agri-derivatives market. Be it the market coming under the aegis of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in 2015 or the inception of agri-options in 2018, every milestone filled the industry and the commodities sector in the country with vigour to chart a new course of development. New contracts were launched, and in the wake of the increasing thrust by the government of India on incorporating and strengthening farmer producer companies (FPCs), an intense effort was launched by the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) to on-board them. It was a proactive step to bring the fruits of the derivatives market to the farmers, which resulted in bringing more than a million of them affliated with 400 FPCs to the NCDEX platform during 2016-22. The FPCs together traded in one-and-a-half dozen commodities from across 14 states. More than 4.2 lakh farmers benefitted through these FPCs that cumulatively sold more than 12,000 MT of crops to realise around Rs 41 crore by March 31, 2022. This was quite an achievement for a country where farmers still languish, unable to derive benefits from the growth and development chain.
/bit.ly/3cHCSpb
LME: Change Of Membership Category E D & F MAN CAPITAL MARKETS LIMITED
Mondovisione
The London Metal Exchange (the LME or the Exchange) hereby notifies the market that, with effect from 25 July 2022 and pursuant to Regulation 6.1 of Part 2 of the Rules and Regulations of the LME (the Rules), E D & F Capital Markets Limited (ED&F) shall cease to be a Category 1 Member of the LME and shall become a Category 2 Member.
/jlne.ws/3aZ06GU
NYSE Arca Options Pillar Migration - Market Maker Quote Processing during an Auction Processing Period
NYSE
Beginning on Monday, July 25th, for Market Marker Quotes ('Quotes') received before the Auction Processing Period ('Auction') in symbols that have migrated to the Arca Options Pillar trading platform, the Exchange will no longer accept order instructions to cancel, cancel/replace or otherwise modify Quotes, when such order instructions arrive during the Auction or the transition to continuous trading. Instead, the Exchange will reject such order instructions. At the end of the Auction, the Exchange will cancel any same-side Quotes sent from the same order/quote entry port of the Market Maker.
/bit.ly/3LUpTgO
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| Fintech | | A roundup of today's market tech news and a look at tomorrow's disruptors | It's the End of 'Fantasyland' for Big Tech and Its Workers
Jon Swartz, MarketWatch - Forbes
After Big Tech grew in unprecedented and unchecked fashion for a decade, building ostentatious palaces to house growing workforces while plying them luxuriant freebies to keep them from defecting to rivals, is the wild ride over? Tech's largest companies, as well as their smaller competitors, are looking to cut back as they face a litany of headaches: Billions of dollars in unused commercial real estate; supply-chain and cost issues; evaporating funding; a 21% drop in global M&A activity in the first half of the year to $2.2 trillion, according to new data from Refinitiv; an all-but-shut window on IPOs; wage inflation; talent retention.
/jlne.ws/3zuaoYF
Twitter Has No Right to Remain Silent; Shareholders seem overly fixated on Elon Musk as company's fundamentals worsen
Laura Forman - WSJ
Twitter's shareholders are placing their hopes on a Chance card, but the company might never pass go or collect $200. Snap Inc.'s SNAP dismal results on Thursday showed social media's advertising business has serious problems: Macroeconomic conditions are weakening, Apple's privacy changes have made ad targeting more difficult and, unsurprisingly, spending on smaller platforms has been the first to go. As a fun plot twist, Twitter has a unique problem in Elon Musk. The social-media company said Friday its revenue for the second quarter declined year on year, its business lost hundreds of millions of dollars and its daily active monetizable users (essentially, those who can view ads) in the U.S. fell short of Wall Street's expectations. It isn't a good look for a business that can best be described as in limbo as it prepares to force itself on a now unwilling acquirer in court.
/jlne.ws/3POp0HV
Fidelity Made a Splash With Bitcoin 401(k)s. Fintechs Are Wading In Too.
Luisa Beltran - Barron's
Fidelity Investments made waves in the retirement-planning industry when it became the first of the major record-keepers to roll out Bitcoin for 401(k) plans. But fintech start-u psare moving in as well.
/jlne.ws/3v9sTza
The Cloud Isn't Recession Proof; Amazon, Microsoft and Google's cloud businesses offset more challenged segments but aren't immune to a slowing economy
Dan Gallagher - WSJ
Three of the largest tech companies will be leaning heavily on their cloud operations to help weather the economic storm hitting other parts of their businesses. But even the cloud can get rained on. The segments will figure heavily in coming quarterly results this week from Amazon, Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet. All three are facing pressure in other parts of their businesses.
/jlne.ws/3S1l6x0
Little House on the Blockchain
Amanda Aronczyk and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi - NPR
Since late last year, the bottom has fallen out of the crypto market. It's lost $2 trillion, about two-thirds of its peak value, making people skeptical about cryptocurrencies and their long term viability. So when we heard about a real estate agent in Philadelphia who built a cryptocurrency miner into a house he was listing, we decided to go see it. Maybe we'd visit the open house and find crypto true believers mingling with newbies, all of them wrestling with the question: what is crypto actually good for? On this episode, we travel to the City of Brotherly Love to check out a home listing like no other we've ever seen: the crypto house. Special thanks to Brady Dale at Axios and Robert Hackett at Andreessen Horowitz.
/jlne.ws/3S2VccC
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| Cybersecurity | | Top stories for cybersecurity | Cybersecurity hiring remains red-hot—the industry to surpass $400 billion market size by 2027
Sydney Lake - Fortune
In 2017, the global cybersecurity industry had an approximate market size of $86.4 billion, according to research conducted by Gartner, a tech research and consulting firm. But just a decade later, the market is expected to grow nearly 80%. By 2027, market research company BrandEssence projects that the global cybersecurity market will reach $403 billion; that's with a compound annual growth rate of 12.5% between 2020 and 2027.
/jlne.ws/3vd8pFS
Minimizing risk: Key cybersecurity-related M&A considerations
HelpNetSecurity
Global M&A hit new highs in 2021 reaching an eye-popping $5.1 trillion in total deal value, according to PwC. With economic headwinds leaving acquisition as the only viable exit, further consolidation in the market is inevitable.
One thing that typically gets overlooked in that M&A frenzy, is the technical difficulties of inheriting digital assets of the acquired company and the cybersecurity risk that comes with it.
/jlne.ws/3z0H6j4
Cybersecurity Market Size to Grow by USD 189.70 Bn, Broadcom Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. Among Key Vendors
Press Release
The cybersecurity market is fragmented, and the vendors are deploying various organic and inorganic growth strategies to compete in the market. The cybersecurity market size is expected to grow by USD 189.70 billion from 2020 to 2025. In addition, the market will accelerate at a CAGR of 14.97% during the forecast period.
/jlne.ws/3othxCk
Congress joins the fight over foreign spyware
Tim Starks - The Washington Post
Congress has taken relatively little action so far to counter advanced foreign spyware that has eavesdropped on U.S. officials, activists and journalists.
But that appears to be changing, with a rare open House Intelligence Committee hearing this week on the secretive industry.
/jlne.ws/3PQvvtz
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| Cryptocurrencies | | Top stories for cryptocurrencies | GameStop's NFT marketplace appears to remove an image that referenced a defining moment of the 9/11 attacks
Sam Tabahriti - Insider
GameStop's non-fungible token marketplace appears to have removed an image referencing a defining moment of the 9/11 attacks. Web3 is going great spotted the NFT called "Falling Man", which depicts one of the best-known images captured by Associated Press photojournalist Richard Drew in New York on September 11 of a man plunging to his death. Of the 2,753 people who died inside the World Trade Center and surrounding area that day, an estimated 100 jumped while the towers were still standing. The NFT's description on the website said "this one probably fell from the MIR station" in an apparent reference to Russia's decommissioned space station, which ended its mission in 2001.
/jlne.ws/3PTu9OM
The quest to find $181 million in bitcoin buried in a dump; James Howells is known as the man who accidentally threw away 8,000 bitcoins. Now he has an $11 million master plan to get them back.
Isobel Asher Hamilton - Insider
ames Howells' life changed when he threw out a hard drive about the size of an iPhone 6. Howells, from the city of Newport in southern Wales, had two identical laptop hard drives squirreled away in a drawer in 2013. One was blank; he says the other contained 8,000 bitcoins — now worth about $181 million, even after the recent crypto crash. He'd meant to throw out the blank one, but instead the drive containing the cryptocurrency ended up going to the local dump in a garbage bag. Nine years later, he's determined to get back his stash, which he mined in 2009. Howells, 36, is hoping local authorities will let him stage a high-tech treasure hunt for the buried bitcoins. His problem is that he can't get into the dump.
/jlne.ws/3b18SUO
Crypto: Billionaire Mark Cuban Warns of a Powerful Player; The billionaire entrepreneur is a cryptocurrency evangelist.
Luc Olinga - The Street
The crypto industry is currently going through a crisis that has already crushed some major players like hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and lenders Celsius Network and Voyager Digital. After losing over $2 trillion in less than nine months, the cryptocurrency market has more or less stabilized over the past few days. But it was also at this time that bad news was issued by the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission.
/jlne.ws/3J2mLOO
Central African Regional Bank Seeks Common Digital Currency; Move is Africa's first common digital currency initiative; Nigeria launched digital verson of naira in October last year
Baudelaire Mieu and Katarina Hoije - Bloomberg
The central African regional bank has been urged by its board to introduce a common digital currency for its six member states to modernize payment structures and promote regional financial inclusion. The board made the call in an emailed statement signed by its head, Herve Ndoba, following a meeting in Cameroon's economic capital, Douala, this week.
/jlne.ws/3OBOgks
Tesla's Bitcoin Dump Leaves Accounting Mystery in Its Wake
Nicola M White - Bloomberg
Tesla Inc. made waves this week when it announced that it had dumped the bulk of its Bitcoin stash. Selling 75% of its cryptocurrency gave the company a one-time cash infusion, Elon Musk's electric car company said, but the battered value of its remaining Bitcoin also dinged profits. Exactly how crypto helped and hurt Tesla's bottom line is difficult to disentangle, however, based on what it told the public on earnings day. Current accounting rules—or lack thereof—play a big role. "Tesla's disclosure is really vague and not transparent," said Vivian Fang, accounting professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. "It is very difficult to realize exactly what is the realized gain and what is the impairment charge."
/jlne.ws/3zr9aNX
Coinbase scrubs its blog of a product manager indicted for insider trading in historic crypto crackdown case
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez - FORTUNE
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has quietly scrubbed its blog of any mention of an employee who was charged with insider trading on Thursday. On March 7, Coinbase published a blog post entitled "Improved clarity and guardrails for new assets on Coinbase." The post was signed by Ishan Wahi, a former product manager on a team that listed assets on the exchange and who was arrested this week by federal authorities for allegedly providing insider information to his brother, Nikhil Wahi, and a friend, Sameer Ramani, that resulted in nearly $1.5 million in illicit profit, according to the Justice Department. "Our goal is to be as transparent as possible with our customers regarding trading risks, so we are introducing a new experimental label on asset pages and a disclosure when executing trades for some assets," said the blog post that was formerly signed by Wahi.
/jlne.ws/3OyPqw2
'Amazon Of Crypto'—Former Blackrock Exec Predicts Everyone Will Hold This Crypto As Price Of Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Luna, And Dogecoin Soar
Dan Runkevicius - Forbes
Afternoon last month's rout, crypto is on the rebound. Over the past week, the price of bitcoin soared 12.1% and the ethereum price jumped 35.5%. XRP is up 8%, cardano 14.6%, dogecoin 11.8%, BNB 13.6%, solana 15.2%, and Terra's "luna 2.0" 4.9%. Meanwhile, in a recent interview, Edward Dowd, former managing director of Blackrock, likened crypto's bear market to the dot-com bust. He thinks it is a necessary cleansing of the market that will give rise to crypto equivalents of today's internet juggernauts.
/jlne.ws/3OwiZP1
Investors Take Sink-or-Swim Approach to Struggling Crypto Startups; 'Whatever doesn't work is going to get washed out, and money is going to go into new investments,' one VC says
Angus Loten and Vipal Monga - WSJ
The downfall of Celsius Network LLC last week may be a harbinger of things to come for other troubled cryptocurrency startups, whose backers appear reluctant to prop them up with emergency funds, investors and analysts say. Celsius, a London-based crypto lender, filed for bankruptcy protection roughly a month after halting withdrawals to stem losses from sharp declines in digital currency prices. Last month, Celsius investors told The Wall Street Journal they had no plans to put up more capital to save the company. Across the market, other investors appear to be taking a similar sink-or-swim approach to their crypto startups, as the virtual currencies continue their downward vortex.
/jlne.ws/3z02wNg
Why DeFi Might Be Safer Than Traditional Finance
Michael J. Casey - CoinDesk
There are two questions of acute relevance I want to try to answer in the wake of the latest crypto market retreat. First, is decentralized finance more trustworthy and robust than conventional financial services? And second, are some DeFi systems more stable than others? Those questions became newly weighty as a wave of loan defaults and insolvencies in recent weeks hit centralized "lending platforms" like Celsius Network and Voyager Digital. Those entities sometimes leveraged DeFi rhetoric and, in Celsius' case, deployed customer funds to DeFi systems with extremely mixed results. Three Arrows Capital, arguably the Typhoid Mary of this year's crypto contagion, had major exposure to the luna (LUNA) token and terraUSD (UST) algorithmic stablecoin, a fatally flawed system based on some DeFi principles. (For a thorough description of these relationships, see my recent account of the Great Crypto Unwind.)
/jlne.ws/3cFFxj5
Coinbase, Flexa dispute SEC's claims that these 9 cryptocurrencies are securities
Frances Yue - MarketWatch
Coinbase pushed back against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's claims that seven cryptocurrencies listed on the crypto exchange were securities, while Flexa, issuer of one of the coins involved, said it hasn't been contacted by the agency. Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged a former Coinbase product manager in the first-ever cryptocurrency insider-trading case, for allegedly tipping his brother and a friend to planned asset listings on the exchange before they were publicly disclosed. In a separate civil-suit complaint filed by the SEC, the agency said that nine of the 25 crypto assets involved were securities, and detailed why they would pass the Howey test, the U.S. Supreme Court precedent that determines what qualifies as "investment contracts." The nine coins include Flexa's AMP, as well as RLY, DDX, XYO, RGT, LCX, POWR, DFX and KROM.
/jlne.ws/3Oyr71w
Citi Says Crypto Contagion Appears to Have Ceased
Will Canny - CoinDesk
With numerous brokers and market makers making counterparty exposure disclosures, Celsius Network filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and staked ether (stETH) returning towards parity, it is likely crypto contagion fears have peaked in the interim, Citi (C) said in a research report on Wednesday. Staked ether's discount to ether (ETH) has narrowed, which suggests some liquidity stress may have passed, the bank's report said, adding that the "acute deleveraging phase" has now ended given many of the large brokers and market makers in the sector have disclosed their exposures. In a further positive sign, stablecoin outflows have been stemmed, the bank said, and outflows from crypto exchange-traded funds (ETF) have also stabilized in recent weeks. Exchange and futures leverage is also "benign," it added.
/jlne.ws/3zvMcFs
'Crypto bro' isn't just slang. New research shows the industry is dominated by men
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez - FORTUNE
By now, we're all familiar with the "crypto bro." You know the type: either a nerdy man behind a laptop or a twentysomething partygoer in Miami or New York talking about "blockchain-based economies," he became a fixture of in the early 2020s. Whatever your perception of him, new research shows the crypto bro is not just a nickname. Stock and crypto broker Forex Suggest finds that when it comes to the balance of "crypto bros" to women on crypto companies' boards, there is really no contest. Of the 32 biggest crypto companies in the world, Forex's study found, 100% had male CEOs; and eight of the top companies in the crypto space lacked a single female board member.
/jlne.ws/3vdXpI7
Moelis Brushes Off Crypto Winter to Start Blockchain Group; Senior investment banker John Momtazee to lead Moelis effort; Longtime venture investor Lou Kerner to become senior adviser
Liana Baker and Sonali Basak - Bloomberg
Moelis & Co., the investment bank founded by billionaire Ken Moelis, is starting a group to focus on global blockchain deals after a spate of transactions among crypto firms. John Momtazee, who co-founded Moelis and is the global head of media investment banking, is overseeing the effort. Longtime venture investor Lou Kerner is joining the firm as a senior adviser to the group, reuniting the two executives who worked together more than 20 years ago.
/jlne.ws/3zxauPe
Ken Moelis' Investment Bank Creates Group to Focus on Blockchain Deals: Report
Oliver Knight - Coindesk
Investment bank Moelis & Co. has started a group to focus on venture deals in the blockchain and digital asset industry, according to a report by Bloomberg. The bank is led by billionaire Ken Moelis, who likened the crypto space to the 1848 gold rush in a speech last year, Bloomberg said.
/jlne.ws/3PPFBuS
Brazil's XP Inc to open crypto platform to clients in August
Paula Arend Laier - Reuters
Brazilian brokerage XP Inc expects to open its digital assets trading platform to clients by mid-August, initially offering bitcoin and ether but with plans to expand it by the end of this year, the company's director of financial products said.
/jlne.ws/3PAsJZN
Bankman-Fried's FTX In Advanced Talks to Acquire South Korea's Bithumb
Nicholas Otieno - Blockchain News
FTX, a global cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in the Bahamas, is in talks to acquire its rival Bithumb, South Korea's leading cryptocurrency exchange, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal is already in an advanced stage, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because the discussions are private. Its financial terms are yet to be disclosed. Amid a series of recent deals, FTX is now talking to Bithumb about a potential acquisition. According to the report, the discussions have been ongoing for several months.
/bit.ly/3Pxhm4X
NFTs are coming for the loyalty perks programs at brands like Budweiser
Riley de León - CNBC
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have come for just about every corner of the Internet and every business willing to throw money at what's been dubbed "Web3" — a hypothetical, future version of the net based on blockchain technology. As they do, Hang, a new B2B startup in the fledgling space, is looking to help some of the world's largest brands replace their existing membership and loyalty programs with NFTs using the technology. The rise of the internet meant that anyone could view images, videos and songs online for free. People are buying NFTs out of the belief that they'll be able to prove ownership of a virtual item through blockchain technology, which serves as a digital ledger of transaction history.
/jlne.ws/3J17Lkm
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| Politics | | An overview of politics as it relates to the financial markets | Editorial: Trump should be charged for crimes against the United States
Los Angeles Times
Charging a former president with crimes would be an extraordinary development in American history and carries the risk of forever reshaping our politics as well as the very future of the nation. It should not be undertaken lightly. But former President Trump's multifaceted attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election that culminated with him inciting violent mobs to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying Joe Biden's victory, was also an extraordinary development in American history — one that nearly destroyed our democracy.
/jlne.ws/3RXJTCa
N.Korea denounces U.S. over Washington's remarks on cryptocurrency stealing
Reuters
North Korea on Saturday condemned remarks by a senior White House official about Pyongyang's cyberattack capabilities and said it would continue to stand against what it called U.S. aggression towards it. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that branding North Korea as a "group of criminals" revealed the true nature of Washington's hostile policy towards North Korea. Anne Neuberger, the U.S. deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, reportedly said on Wednesday that the North Koreans were a criminal syndicate pursuing revenue "in the guise of a country".
/jlne.ws/3os9hCH
Surface-to-Air Missiles Need Chips Too, Pentagon Tells Congress; Microelectronics 'fundamental' to every military system: Hick; Deputy secretary pitches for the Chips Act pending in Congress
Daniel Flatley and Anthony Capaccio - Bloomberg
The Pentagon is pushing for the passage of legislation aimed at boosting the US's domestic semiconductor industry, telling lawmakers the components, which go into everything from vacuum cleaners to fighter jets, are needed for the war in Ukraine. "The national security stakes for passing the Chips Act are high," Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in a statement to Bloomberg News. "Microelectronics are fundamental to virtually every current and legacy military system."
/jlne.ws/3vcw9tK
Companies cannot win America's culture wars; Business leaders wary of taking positions on contentious issues should look at their wider political strategy
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson - FT
By the standards of contemporary activist campaigns, it was an unremarkable press release. Color of Change, a racial justice group, fired off a statement last week demanding that companies stop funding politicians who restrict women's access to abortions. Color of Change is far from the first progressive organisation to accuse businesses of hypocrisy for enabling attacks on reproductive rights while offering to cover travel costs for employees needing out-of-state treatment after the Supreme Court last month ended their constitutional right to a termination.
/jlne.ws/3z3SsCU
The 150% Energy-Price Shock Waiting for the Next UK Leader; Household bills are set to surge again in October
Rachel Morison - Bloomberg
Every UK prime minister expects to face challenges. Few would imagine that they might have to spend billions of pounds to make sure people don't freeze in their homes during winter.
/jlne.ws/3S3pvQq
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| Regulation & Enforcement | | Stories about regulation and the law. | Gerry Rice To Retire As IMF Director Of Communications
IMF - Mondovisione
Gerry Rice will retire on December 1 as Director of the Communications Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced today.
/jlne.ws/3cs0u0H
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva Announces The IMF's New Gender Strategy
IMF - Mondovisione
Ms. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), made the following statement today: "I am most pleased and proud to announce that the Executive Board today approved the IMF's first Gender Strategy aimed at integrating gender into the Fund's core activities — surveillance, capacity development, and lending— in accordance with its mandate. This means more systematically assessing the macroeconomic consequences of gender gaps where they are macro-critical, evaluating the gender-differentiated impact of shocks and policies, and providing granular and tailored macroeconomic and financial policy advice and capacity development support..."
/jlne.ws/3zsU4ro
My Big Coin Founder Convicted of Defrauding Investors of More Than $6M
Nelson Wang - CoinDesk
A federal jury has convicted Randall Crater, the founder of My Big Coin, of wire fraud and money laundering for selling fraudulent virtual currency, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.
/jlne.ws/3zEI3iN
Founder of 'My Big Coin' Convicted of Crypto Fraud; A Boston jury returned a guilty verdict against Randall Crater, who allegedly marketed and sold a fraudulent crypto coin to investors
Mengqi Sun - WSJ
A New York man has been convicted of defrauding investors of more than $6 million by marketing and selling fraudulent virtual currency, the U.S. Justice Department said. A jury returned a guilty verdict Thursday against Randall Crater, 51, of East Hampton, N.Y., in the U.S. District Court in Boston. He was convicted of four counts of wire fraud, three counts of money-laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, according to court documents.
/jlne.ws/3BbpmUV
SEC says 9 out of 25 assets in crypto insider trading case are securities
Monika Ghosh - Forkast
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged in a civil suit filed last week that nine of the 25 crypto assets traded in the first-ever cryptocurrency insider trading case were securities and that leaking confidential information, therefore, amounted to securities fraud.
https://jlne.ws/3RZNJdZ
KPMG receives its largest UK fine for misleading regulator; Big Four firm fined £14.4mn for providing false information about its audits of Carillion and Regenersis
Michael O'Dwyer - FT
KPMG has been handed its largest ever UK fine of £14.4mn for deliberately misleading the accounting regulator during inspections of its audits of collapsed outsourcer Carillion and another UK company, Regenersis. The fine was imposed by an industry tribunal that found the Big Four firm provided false and misleading documents and information to the Financial Reporting Council.
/jlne.ws/3otxhWc
Review of U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office Details Missteps in Unaoil Bribery Case; The review report came as the bribery conviction of a third defendant was overturned
Mengqi Sun - WSJ
An independent review of how the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office handled a bribery case linked to Unaoil Group that has led to three acquittals has shed light on gaps in the white-collar-crime prosecuting agency's operations and culture. The review was launched in February by the attorney general for England and Wales after an appeal court found serious missteps by the SFO in its case involving Unaoil, a Monaco-based oil-services company.
/jlne.ws/3z8Jp3A
SFC reprimands and fines Rifa Futures Limited $9 million for regulatory breaches
Securities & Futures Commission of Hong Kong
The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has reprimanded and fined Rifa Futures Limited (Rifa) $9 million for failures in complying with know-your-client, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) and other regulatory requirements between May 2016 and October 2018 (Note 1).
/jlne.ws/3J4BQ2n
ASIC warns small businesses to be vigilant about payment redirection scams
ASIC - Australian Securities and Investments Commission
ASIC urges small businesses to be wary of payment redirection scams as the latest Targeting scams report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) showed that these scams caused the highest losses to businesses in 2021.
Payment redirection scams involve scammers impersonating a business or its employees via email and requesting an upcoming payment be redirected to a fraudulent account.
/jlne.ws/3JiI7Id
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| Investing & Trading | | Today's top stories from equities, indices and FICC (fixed income, currencies and commodities) | Rich Americans Keep Borrowing, Defying Economic Gloom; Bank of America and Morgan Stanley recorded double-digit growth in loans to wealth-management customers in the second quarter
Rachel Louise Ensign - WSJ
Wealthy people ramped up borrowing in the first half of the year despite rising rates and a stock-market rout that hit the value of their portfolios. The wealth-management units at Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. posted double-digit loan growth in the second quarter. The increase came from well-heeled clients taking out mortgages and loans backed by assets like stock-and-bond portfolios, executives said. Morgan Stanley said mortgages rose 30% in its wealth unit from a year earlier to $50 billion, while securities-backed and other loans grew 23% to $93 billion. At Bank of America, wealth-management loans rose 12% from a year earlier to $222 billion, outpacing a 4% increase in the bank's consumer division.
/jlne.ws/3PSCT7T
The alchemy behind falling metal prices
Paddy Hirsch and Adrian Ma - NPR
The best economic fortune tellers are back in town. Amongst traders, metals are known for their ability to forecast turning points. When the economy is doing well, prices of base metals like copper rise. On the opposite side of the coin, prices of precious metals like gold fall. But what happens when both copper and gold prices spiral down? Find out the magical forces causing this out-of-the-ordinary trend in today's uncertain economy.
/jlne.ws/3z056mq
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| Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance | | Stories about environmental, social and governance investing | 'Are we nearly there yet?' Banks navigate ESG loan accounting; Lenders ask standards boards for guidance on how rules should be applied
Rebekah Tunstead - Risk.net
Like a driver at night struggling to make out faraway shapes with their headlights, accounting standards boards have always tried to predict the financial products that will be coming down the road. Over recent decades, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in the US and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have devised standards that they felt could apply to a broad range of products.
/bit.ly/3PTXqZG
Cricket Scotland Is Institutionally Racist, Report Finds; Entire board resigned ahead of report into allegations; Some people who raised concerns were victimized: participants
Olivia Konotey-Ahulu - Bloomberg
Cricket's governing body in Scotland is institutionally racist in its processes, attitudes and behaviors, an independent review found. More than 30 allegations of racism have been made, many of which have been forwarded to Cricket Scotland, while a further 122 people reported experiencing racial discrimination. The organization's entire board resigned on Sunday ahead of publication of the report.
/jlne.ws/3S34S6D
HSBC to Offer Gender-Neutral Banking in Bid for Inclusivity; Bank starting to remove references to gender in some products; Citigroup, BMO are offering non-binary payment cards
William Shaw and Eileen Gbagbo - Bloomberg
HSBC Holdings Plc's UK unit is planning to stop collecting data on the gender of its customers across some products as the bank pursues more inclusive services for non-binary and trans people. The bank has begun removing references to gender in some products including HSBC Kinetic, its mobile first banking business account, and its new tool for mortgages in principle, according to a company spokeswoman. It is part of a wider review into the inclusivity of its offerings and further changes are being explored.
/jlne.ws/3cEirJM
BlackRock shows why finance and fossil fuel politics shouldn't mix; Governments that unleash fund managers and retail banks to make the hard climate decisions about oil and gas are dodging accountability.
Nick Hossack - Financial Review
One of the more insidious dog whistles I've heard recently is not from Donald Trump in his communications with US patriot groups, many of which believe the evil Washington/Wall Street elite is operating an international paedophile ring. Asked on ABC TV whether the Labor government was going to cave in to Green calls for the ending of all new oil and gas projects in Australia, the newly appointed Labor Finance Minister, Katy Gallagher, said she was happy with the current regulatory protections, but then noted on three occasions that oil and gas projects had to get finance.
/bit.ly/3OtYHpf
Fund Managers Face 'Rapidly Closing' Window to Fix CO2 Math
Investment firms are using different methodologies to calculate their carbon footprints.
Frances Schwartzkopff - Bloomberg
As global warming leaves a trail of wildfires, drought and human loss across much of the northern hemisphere, there's fresh evidence that the financial pledges needed to protect the environment may not be fit for purpose. "I hope that what we're seeing will accelerate action, but it's not necessarily the case," said Jean-Xavier Hecker, co-head of ESG research at JPMorgan Chase & Co., in an interview.
/bloom.bg/3PDAnCL
Big Oil v The World review — forensic documentary examines climate change's culprits; The BBC2 three-parter highlights the role of the oil and gas majors in spreading disinformation about fossil fuels
Dan Einav - FT
It is 40 degrees in London at the time of writing. And, at the risk of making the rest of this review seem redundant, that fact alone should persuade anyone of the urgency of a new documentary series that outlines why we have found ourselves in the midst of a devastating climate crisis.
/jlne.ws/3RWATxl
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| Banks, Brokers & Managed Funds | | The latest from banks, brokers, hedge funds and managed futures | Trading in STOXX, DAX listed derivatives jumps in 1H 2022 amid market volatility
Qontingo
Trading in STOXX and DAX derivatives on Eurex had one of the busiest periods in the past decade during the first half of 2022, as investors turned to the instruments to hedge and manage portfolios amid a broad market sell-off. Over 450 million futures and options linked to a STOXX or DAX index traded between January and the end of June this year, the third-highest volume for any calendar half-year period going back to 2012. Only the first half of 2020, when COVID-19 hit markets, and the first half of 2016, when Brexit shocked market participants, saw more activity in the contracts, Eurex data show.
/jlne.ws/3BfkdeA
Jane Fraser keeps Citigroup out of harm's way — for now; US bank posts better than expected results during tricky second quarter
Gary Silverman - FT
Global financial markets have been turbulent this year, and for Wall Street veterans that raises a familiar concern: How is Citigroup going to screw up this time? The company formed by the 1998 combination of John Reed's Citicorp commercial bank and Sandy Weill's Travelers — which engaged in everything from investment banking to subprime lending — has been accident-prone throughout its history. An investor would have been better off stuffing money under a mattress than backing the Reed-Weill behemoth from the start. Citi stock has lost most of its value since their merger. However, when the bank reported second-quarter results on July 15, it was the Citi naysayers who took a beating.
/jlne.ws/3otOxKU
Citi Shutters Muni Proprietary-Trading Desk Amid a Wave of Departures; Bank slips to fifth place among US muni underwriters; More than two dozen bankers, traders, salespeople depart
Martin Z Braun, Amanda Albright, and Jennifer Surane - Bloomberg
Citigroup Inc.'s municipal-bond business, for decades a powerhouse in the $4 trillion market for US state and city debt, has seen a wave of high-profile departures as the bank revamps parts of the group's trading and banking units. The bank in recent months shuttered its muni proprietary trading unit -- which used the firm's own cash to trade and invest -- as part of a push to focus on providing more of its balance sheet to larger, institutional clients, according to people familiar with the matter. Citigroup offered buyouts to more than a dozen senior traders, bankers and salespeople, spurring further departures across the group as rivals moved quickly to poach talent
/jlne.ws/3RZjNyD
Three Arrows Capital Founders Say Terra, GBTC Trades Led to Fund Blowup: Report
Shaurya Malwa - CoinDesk
Trades involving the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), Terra's luna (LUNA) and terraUSD (UST) tokens eventually led to the blowup of beleaguered crypto fund Three Arrows Capital, its founders told Bloomberg. The fund's founders Kyle Davies and Su Zhu had previously confirmed they took on some $200 million in losses related to LUNA and the now-imploded algorithmic stablecoin UST. Prices of the two tokens entered a death spiral in mid-May and fell to nearly zero in the following weeks. "What we failed to realize was that luna was capable of falling to effective zero in a matter of days and that this would catalyze a credit squeeze across the industry that would put significant pressure on all of our illiquid positions," Zhu explained. He added that Three Arrows Capital, popularly referred to as 3AC, had failed to flag risks related to Terra.
/jlne.ws/3b7ejBC
How the Morrisons buyout turned into a nightmare for Goldman Sachs; Mega-deal went from dream ticket to a symbol of the excesses of cheap-money era
Robert Smith and Kaye Wiggins - FT
The Goldman Sachs bankers were in a hole. It was February 2022 and they were trying to sell over £5bn worth of bonds and loans backing the UK's biggest leveraged buyout in years: US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice's £10bn takeover of grocer Morrisons.
/jlne.ws/3Owqzcy
Hedge funds help China ETFs shine; The demand for swap contracts to short Chinese stocks means synthetic ETFs have outperformed
Steve Johnson - FT
Small investors do not often get the chance to profit from the actions of professional hedge fund slickers, but in some cases they appear to be doing so in the mainland Chinese stock market. A structural anomaly means investors using some exchange traded funds to access Shanghai and Shenzhen-listed "A shares" may be able to consistently outperform the underlying index — thanks to the desperation of hedge funds to short stocks by using a "swap enhancement" (see below).
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| Wellness Exchange | | An Exchange of Health and Wellness Information | China says Xi Jinping and other leaders have been given domestic Covid-19 vaccines, amid public concern over safety
Yong Xiong - CNN
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other top state officials have been given domestic Covid-19 vaccines, the ruling Communist Party said in a rare disclosure aimed at stimulating China's booster program. Deputy head of the National Health Commission (NHC) Zeng Yixin said on Saturday that "all China's incumbent state and party leaders" have been vaccinated against Covid-19 with domestically made shots, referring to top officials at the national and deputy national level -- a category that includes Xi, Premier Li Keqiang, and other senior leaders. I
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We've all got Covid-19 fatigue, but BA.5 shows it's not over; Despite increased cases, public health officials' plans seem muted, at best.
Ellen Ioanes - VOX
The BA.5 Covid-19 subvariant is now the most dominant strain in the country; the highly infectious variant has caused an uptick in cases and hospitalizations both in hotspots like New York City and the nation overall, but public health action and messaging is less aggressive than with previous outbreaks. BA.5 typically causes familiar symptoms like fever, headache, muscle aches, cough, and sore throat but can still cause serious illness, especially in individuals with preexisting conditions. It's even entered the highest halls of power, with President Joe Biden's doctor saying in a letter Saturday that Biden is likely infected with BA.5. But there's been little focus on the national plan to keep the subvariant under control, which the Biden administration rolled out July 12.
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Record number of COVID-hit Australians in hospital as Omicron surges
Renju Jose - Reuters
The number of Australians admitted to hospitals with COVID-19 hit a record of about 5,450 on Monday, official data showed, as the spread of highly contagious new Omicron sub-variants strains the healthcare system nationwide. The figure has grown since late June, as the BA.4 and BA.5 strains became dominant since they can evade immune protection, whether from vaccination or prior infection, while some experts say the latter can be as infectious as measles. The number of those in hospitals is the highest since the emergence of the coronavirus, exceeding January's high of 5,390 during the first wave of Omicron infections. Daily death tolls have also risen, topping 100 on Saturday for the first time. More than 1,000 retirement homes have suffered outbreaks, the government said, as the elderly are largely affected.
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Bill Gates Sounds the Alarm Over a Deadly Viral Disease; The Microsoft co-founder has been working for several years to eradicate certain diseases around the world.
Luc Olinga - The Street
Bill Gates has often been called the most powerful doctor in the world. This unofficial title comes from the fact that the co-founder of software giant Microsoft has devoted all his efforts since becoming a philanthropist to health causes. The billionaire has become one of the biggest donors to the World Health Organization (WHO). And through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, co-founded with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates, he funds health and poverty-relief projects in developing countries, including malaria research and vaccination programs. The mogul has also made eradicating certain diseases a priority.
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Covid-19 Lab Companies Retrench as Rapid Tests Take Over; PCR-testing capacity is shrinking as funding declines and people test at home or forgo screening
Brianna Abbott - WSJ
More people checking for Covid-19 infections are choosing rapid, at-home antigen tests over PCR tests processed at laboratories, making variant-driven waves harder to track and helping to spur a retrenchment in testing capacity that labs had built up over the pandemic. U.S. laboratories currently have the capacity to process the results of about 62 million PCR tests for Covid-19 a month, which is half of what it was in March, researchers at the consulting firm Health Catalysts Group estimate, after demand dropped and government funding diminished. Some laboratories and diagnostic companies have laid off employees or reassigned them to other tasks. SummerBio LLC, a startup that once processed some 100,000 PCR tests a day, is halting production, putting equipment in storage and laying off some 100 workers. One of its bigger clients, the Los Angeles Unified School District, shifted in June from weekly PCR testing to at-home tests.
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Danish Shot Gets EU Nod for Monkeypox as WHO Declares Emergency; Bavarian Nordic's smallpox vaccine gets extended label
Stock gains as much as 10% as analysts see demand surging
Christian Wienberg - Bloomberg
A little-known Danish drugmaker won formal approval in the European Union for its vaccine against monkeypox as the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency.
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Covid-19 infections still rising in England, latest ONS data show; Estimates find about one in 17 in England had virus in week to July 13, but trends elsewhere in UK are 'unclear'
Sarah Neville - FT
The percentage of people infected with coronavirus is still rising in England but trends in the other three UK nations are "uncertain", the Office for National Statistics said on Friday.
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| Regions | | Stories of local interest from the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions | What Foot-and-Mouth Threat Could Mean for Australian Beef Supply
Sybilla Gross - Bloomberg
Australia is on high alert for foot-and-mouth disease in its cattle herds after traces of the virus were found on imported animal products. The disease is already ripping through Indonesia, and is creeping ever closer to paddocks Down Under, where an outbreak could spell disaster for the livestock industry, the economy and world beef supplies.
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'God, give us rain' - Romanian monastery prays for end to drought
Octav Ganea and Luiza Ilie - Reuters
Iulia Coleasa, an 81-year-old who relies on her small plot for food, travelled 15 km in searing heat to a monastery in southern Romania on Sunday to join a service praying for rain.
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People in Britain may have to cut down on their afternoon tea
Paddy Hirsch and Darian Woods - NPR
Food prices in the United Kingdom are going through the roof, and wages are stagnating. Can the next prime minister who will take over for the departing Boris Johnson handle the heat?
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Russia keeps Germany guessing on gas shipments.
NY Times
Russia's decision to restart the flow of natural gas through a vital pipeline on Thursday brought a moment of relief to Germany, which uses the fuel to power its most important industries and heat half its homes. But it is unlikely to be much more than that, Melissa Eddy reports for The New York Times. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made clear that he intends to use his country's energy exports as a cudgel, and even a weapon, to punish and divide European leaders — loosening or tightening the taps as it suits him and his war aims in Ukraine.
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Russian Oligarchs' Top Banker Breaks Free After Making a Fortune Himself; Alex Knaster was once one of Mikhail Fridman's closest business allies. Now he wants to put his old comrades at arm's length.
Will Louch and Benjamin Stupples - Bloomberg
Alex Knaster served Mikhail Fridman for decades, getting so close to the Russian oligarch that a long-standing colleague described him as the billionaire's "right arm" at one point. It's been a lucrative relationship for the former Credit Suisse First Boston banker, who's amassed his own $1.3 billion fortune largely through his work with Fridman and the tycoon's partners, Petr Aven, German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev. Those relationships have soured after Russia's bloody assault on Ukraine made pariahs of Fridman and his cohort, who've been sanctioned as alleged enablers of President Vladimir Putin. Knaster, a 63-year-old financier known for his sharp intelligence, is now scrambling to sever any links to his former associates.
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U.S. Treasury gives green light to Russian default insurance payouts
Reuters
The U.S. Treasury issued a special waiver on Friday to allow investors with insurance against a Russian default, known as Credit Default Swaps, to receive their payouts. The normally straightforward process of CDS payouts was thrown into chaos in June when Washington said its sanctions on Russia represented a total ban on buying Moscow's debt. An investor who buys a CDS contract usually hands over the underlying bond to the bank or fund that sold them the CDS when a default happens. It traditionally involves an auction to determine the price, but under the sanctions that exchange effectively became illegal. The license authorizes U.S. persons to purchase or receive Russian bonds starting two days before the announced date of the auction, and up to eight business days after the auction takes place.
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Cyprus Gas Discoveries Boosted by EU's Shift From Russia Supplies;Gas output from Aphrodite field seen in 2027, minister says
Surveys of other offshore blocks expected in coming months
Paul Tugwell and Georgios Georgiou - Bloomberg
The European Union's drive to slash reliance on Russian natural gas is boosting the strategic importance of finds in Cyprus, the country's energy minister said. "Europe is a good potential customer for Cypriot gas as the EU has confirmed that natural gas will remain a bridge fuel up to 2049 as part of the green transition so companies now have the comfort of being able to secure long-term contracts," Natasa Pilides said in an interview in Nicosia. There is also "the EU's intention to move away from Russia regardless of when the war in Ukraine finishes," she said.
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UK Treasury blocks 'non-essential' overseas aid payments; Ukraine relief may breach spending cap but former minister says halt will 'cost lives'
George Parker, Jim Pickard and Delphine Strauss - FT
Britain's overseas aid programme has been thrown into confusion after the Treasury blocked "non-essential" new payments for the rest of the summer over concerns that the cost of relief work in Ukraine will breach a spending cap. Last year Boris Johnson's government cut Britain's overseas aid budget after the Covid pandemic, "temporarily" ditching a manifesto commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP and replacing it with a new 0.5 per cent limit.
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| Miscellaneous | | Stories that don't quite fit under the other sections | Is Hybrid Work Killing Remote Summer? Yes, but It Doesn't Have To.; Some companies carve out weeks for remote work to keep employees happy
Katherine Bindley - WSJ
Employees at New York City-based Conductor, a marketing-software startup, are required to come into the office three days a week. But for two months every year—four weeks in the spring and another four in August—everybody works from wherever they want, whether it's their kitchen table or Costa Rica. "If we can have a world where we can be together for a lot of the year and also give people the opportunity to live a life in a more adventurous way, I think that's a good outcome," says Seth Besmertnik, Conductor's chief executive officer. For more than two years, many knowledge workers have enjoyed the unfettered freedom to spend weeks or months at a time taking Zoom meetings from a lake house or filing reports while driving across the country. Now, some companies maintaining an in-office component are carving out time for people to work from anywhere, among them American Express Co., which offers 30 days.
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London office sector faces major 'reset' as sales drop sharply; Jump in UK base rate makes borrowing more costly for debt-reliant buyers
George Hammond - FT
Sales of London offices have dropped sharply and values are being revised lower as rising interest rates and fears of a recession trigger the biggest market "reset" since the financial crisis, according to BNP Paribas. Research from the real estate arm of the French bank shows that a leap in the UK base rate from 0.1 per cent to 1.25 per cent over the past eight months has taken the heat out of a sector that was on track for its busiest start to the year — and threatens the value of offices owned by major institutions such as pension funds.
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The Email No Parents Want to Get This Summer: Camp Is Canceled; Camps are dealing with rising Covid-19 cases as the BA.5 Omicron subvariant circulates
Alex Janin - WSJ
Covid-19 is roiling camps this summer, straining already-thin staffs and sometimes forcing cancellations.Nearly all camps across the country are dealing with rising cases in some way this summer as the highly transmissible BA.5 Omicron subvariant circulates, camp directors and industry groups say. For many, the issue is staffing. When counselors get sick, directors have to rework staff assignments and some activities get cut.
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