118 Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast October 30th, 2021

Transcript:

This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:

Valereum Blockchain announced an option to acquire the Gibraltar Stock Exchange. The London Stock Exchange Group is paying up for failure. And there are excellent MSCI results showing just what a data powerhouse can do (once again) – we hope LSEG is taking notes.

My name is Patrick L. Young.

Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest.

It’s the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 118.

Good day ladies and gentlemen, this is a very brief production of highlights amongst the key news in market structure. All the analysis of the many events and happenings can be found in Exchange Invest daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.

More details at ExchangeInvest.com.

Top in the news this week, well dude, it’s got a little bit of self interest therein for (PLY) Patrick L. Young, this particular voice you’re listening to today. Behind this podcast is the Executive Director of Valereum Blockchain, the Aquis listed Gibraltar-based business. Valereum this week made the exciting announcement we have an option to acquire 80% of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange. It’s great to be going public with the deal we’ve been working on for some months.

Elsewhere, there was well quite a slap on from Dubai, the boss of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) Ahmed Bin Sulayem had the Swiss directly in his sights with a LinkedIn article The Indelicate Balance Of Ethics Against Profit. Essentially the head of Dubai’s Commodity Exchange took a swipe at Swiss authorities for telling their refiners to tighten up audits on gold imports from the UAE. As Ahmed Bin Sulayem noted himself:

“As a global refining centre, it is plain to see how Switzerland would benefit from sullying the reputation of the United Arab Emirates through such statements.”

Nearby, Saudi Arabia, they’re keen to turn their smaller bourse into a tech IPO hub. The kingdom is seeking to encourage tech companies to raise money on exchanges in the smaller Nomu market instead of doing private funding rounds. That should be a big boost to Tadawul if they can make it happen.

Elsewhere, the CEOs delivering consistent shareholder returns was a feature in the Financial Times. There was a good piece of analysis with hearty plaudits to many parishioners, Jeffrey Sprecher, Adena Friedman, Henry Fernandez of MSCI, CBOE’s Ed Tilly and MarketAxess’s Rich McVey for all being in the top tier of CEOs measured by the FTS performance metrics.

Somebody who wasn’t in the FTS metrics table as a top performer was the London Stock Exchange Group CEO. Nevertheless, Out of his Depth Dave managed to snag a 25% pay hike this week despite his results, flatlining. Of course, one of the things over the Depth Dave has managed to achieve was selling the bond platform EuroMTS to Euronext as part of the Borsa Italiana giveaway by the London Stock Exchange group.

Euronext are now bidding to become a key service provider for European Union bonds as a result of that gifting through the idiocy of the LSEG strategy. That’s strategy for want of a better term of course.

Over in Singapore, the Singapore Exchange, well, they’ve opened their office in Gift City in India, the Gujarat international Financial Trading centre. The NSE-SGX connect may start as soon as January.

Results this week, it was a frantic week for results in the parish. All of the details were in Exchange Invest, the newsletter no person can afford to be without in capital markets and market structure, if you want to be seriously well informed. For the sake of this podcast let’s look at just a couple of highlights.

Hong Kong Exchanges, their quarterly results were a little bit soggy but nonetheless, profits are at a record level of +15% for the first nine months of the year. If only the same can be said of the CME Group, their revenue of 1.1 billion was shy of the 1.15 consensus figure. The atrophy of CME Group continues, alas.

S&P Global, they increased their revenue 13% in the third quarter year on year, while the London Stock Exchange had a milk toast to percentage kind of gain thing after they tried their best to shuffle all the numbers, presumably very disappointing all round.

Ducks of the field, the IEX (Indian Energy Exchange) their net profits surged 67% year on year. Well we’ve also got to say there were some impressive results from NASDAQ, which I believe we brought you last week and also indeed, the MSCI with their revenues up 21.6% for operating revenue.

In new markets, the Power Exchange in Montenegro will become operational in the second half of 2022, that’s the Montenegrin Power Exchange (MPX). There operator Berza Električne Energije (BELEN), which has signed an agreement for service for the creation of the day-ahead par market with various other parties.

Elsewhere, seven countries are eyeing a regional securities market in South America, according to Dominican Today. The superintendence of the securities markets of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Panama signed a multilateral MOU to establish the initial basis of coordination and cooperation.

Not such a frantic week in deals but good to see that the European Commission formally approved the acquisition of IHS Markit by S&P Global subject to conditions. Looks as if the UK regulator they’re also going subject to conditions behind this deal finally closing.

Elsewhere Bursa Malaysia disposed (in a couple of tranches in the course of the last week) of their remaining shares in the CME group.

Sofia bourse Bulgarian Stock Exchange, they are seeking shareholders’ ascent to acquire a majority stake in the first MTF in Bulgaria, which is run by local investment company Capman.

And of course, no mention of acquisitions this week can possibly go without mentioning Valereum Blockchain once again, our bid to purchase 80% of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange, now subject to closure and regulatory approval. Thanks to City AM, the Times, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph in the UK for being ahead of the curve and discussing the Valereum move to acquire the Gibraltar Stock Exchange.

It’s notable that the Brussels Bugle – that’s the Financial Times which this week slumped to a 35 million pound loss, and indeed, moreover, is tired of selling barely 6000 copies of the newspaper every day in the UK didn’t actually manage to cover the story. Some parishioners still delude themselves that the Financial Times is a financial newspaper.

If you don’t understand the background to the likes of the Valereum Blockchain acquisition of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange, then you might want to pick up a copy of my most recent book “Victory or Death” – Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and the FinTech world published by DV books distributed by Ingram worldwide on Amazon.com and via other leading booksellers worldwide.

Don’t forget too to check out the IPO-Vid history and next week we’ve got Peter Lenardos, the former CEO Cinnober, currently CFO of market making group OSTC, who’s going to be leading a very lively conversation about the Paris which will be difficult to be more lively than this week’s incredible discussion where we were on the day of the launch of Crypto Dad: The fight for The Future of Money by former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo. Giancarlo joined us for an incredible discussion while we were in Providenciales in the beautiful by nature Turks and Caicos Islands this week, while he was in upstate New York. Fabulous discussion! Catch up with an IPO-Vid and you can find us on YouTube.

In crypto land, China have driven another nail into cryptocurrency mining’s coffin not only are they looking for added tax clumped ons on anybody who actually managed to trade cryptocurrency during the course of the last year, but the National Development and Reform Commission have added cryptocurrency mining to a list of industries that China seeks to abolish.

Elsewhere, the CFTC is investigating Polymarket, a crypto venue for bets on Trump, JLo and COVID.

And the Australian senators they’re pushing for the country to become the next international crypto hub. Presumably that’s going to be a very virtual crypto hub as no foreigner can actually get into the country currently.

Finally, the long standing sore could be coming to an end on Mt. Gox as creditors have approved a $9 billion payout to all of the creditors.

Product news this week, CBOE Global and MSCI they’re expanding their index licencing relationship through 2031.

FairX launched micro Crude Oil Futures On October the 25th. And some folk are worrying about the copper market at LME, if it is in danger of becoming somewhat disorderly due to a lack of supply in the vaults.

The Nigerian Commodity Exchange they’re going to be trading farm yields on exchange and indeed Nigeria also launched the Enaira, the latest Central Bank Digital Currency.

Speaking of blockchain, in technology news this week, SETL the vendor of back office CS systems and also in the forefront of the CBDC marketplace per se. They’ve open sourced their blockchain code. A very interesting development who’s going to be diving in first to assess the tech behind the SETL blockchain.

Elsewhere the new Pakistan Stock Exchange trading system went live. PSX, you may recall, bought the software DTS for $2.85 million dollars from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) before the COVID 19 outbreak in February 2020.

Crowdfunding, interesting to see Crowdcube reporting £3 million in revenue for Q3. They’re working on European expansion but no mention of a stated P&L.

Elsewhere Seedrs who you may remember wanted to actually merge with Crowdcube earlier in the year but Antitrust said ‘no’ in the UK. Seedrs are launching a private deal room to open up access to private deals to professional investors.

Regulation news this week, the FATF – they are working to strengthen financial transparency and combat the misuse of virtual assets.

So that’s as in: Heaven forfend that the world’s drug dealers and criminals might abandon the US dollar – that would presumably be a criminal crisis for ‘exorbitant privilege?’

Elsewhere, the Federal Reserve Board announced a broad set of new rules prohibiting purchase of individual securities restricting active trading and increasing the timeliness of reporting and public disclosures by Federal Reserve policymakers and senior staff.

The Fed will however, continue to buy anything for its own account, thus wildly skewing the entire economy. Thank goodness their staff will be blameless in the eyes of Senator “Fauxcahontas” Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Career news this week, the former SEC Official Brett Redfearn, who was a commissioner at one point in time has jumped ship. He’s departed from Coinbase where he sat briefly and has moved to serve as Chairman of the advisory board of Securitize, Inc.

Elsewhere the Civil War within Euronext as to who might become the new boss of the Milan Stock Exchange seems to be settled. Rumour has it that they’re going to appoint the MTS bond platform CEO Fabrizio Testa to replace the retiring Raffaele Jerusalmi, a veteran of bourse Italian and in the London Stock Exchange Group.

In ‘Bigworld,’ the last major central banker it was possible to regard as having a shred of true credibility has resigned. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, he gave a farewell barb about inflation… Raffaele Jerusalmi, the boss of the Bundesbank has resigned, and this also leaves open the chairmanship of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to having it seems become more sceptical still about the mad money QE nonsense, which will in time look like the equivalent of fiscal gender pronouns when the world awakes from its curious 21st century peccadilloes and get on with the cyclical history in place of fiscal canutism.

And on that mysterious and magnificent note, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Patrick L. Young. Thank you very much for listening to this 118th Podcast.

We’ll be back for week 119 episode next week. Have a great week in life, blockchain and markets.

Links:

Valereum Blockchain Announces Option To Acquire Gibraltar Stock Exchange
Valereum Blockchain

Dubai Bourse CEO Rebukes Switzerland Over Letter On UAE Gold
Bloomberg

The Indelicate Balance Of Ethics Against Profit
LinkedIn

Saudi Arabia Keen To Turn Smaller Bourse Into Tech IPO Hub
Bloomberg

The CEOs Delivering Consistent Shareholder Returns
FT

London Stock Exchange Group Backs CEO’s 25% Pay Hike
Reuters

Euronext Sets Sight On EU Bond Business In Race With Rival Venues
MarketScreener

Singapore Exchange Opens Office In Gift City, NSE-SGX Connect May Start In Jan
Mint