Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast 018

Transcript

Another five small steps for mankind and a small week for markets in many ways. Welcome to the exchange invest weekly. 

Thanks for listening Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Patrick L. Young. Well, it's been an interesting week in markets all but with no major news, the world being I suppose, obsessed with things like Brexit. Who knows? We'll see in due course whether the UK Parliament wants to agree whatever it is that they've actually agreed in the first place, which is probably, well, Brexit in name only in some way, shape or form. Certainly it doesn't look like a terribly exciting deal in so many respects, and not the freedom that the UK might have managed to attain. In that sense, well, sadly, it's all to play for I suspect in the near future and who knows, can we actually manage to see an outbreak of prolonged government from the UK. Certainly seems to be the odds are against it and when looking at the juvenile Parliament well the mother of all Parliaments’, well it's more like the mother and insert a very rude word of your choice in that point in time.

Meanwhile, in markets, the LSE boosted their third quarter income and they also had the big announcement of the people news of the week: David Warren, who was of course a veteran CFO to Bob Greifeld at NASDAQ, and laterally work for Xavier Rolet, and then was the caretaker CEO of the LSE is going to stand on sometime during the course of mid 2020 will mark his departure, having obviously given a long and lengthy hand over to David Schwimmer, who has become the CEO who's going to be defined by the Refinitiv deal. Very interesting to see that the notorious bean counter and well, man of incredible cost cutting during the greifeld era, at NASDAQ is not going to be hanging around for the integration of Refinitiv. Hmm, interesting. Meanwhile, in other news, the Bank of America Merrill Lynch volatility bond indexes, they were all ingested. The trade was completed by the Intercontinental exchange. During the course of the last week, Elsewhere in the law courts TP ICAP and a  consulting firm settled a copyright dispute. Has to be said as a publisher, my experience remains that far too many parishioners have a horribly lax attitude to copyright per se. 

Trade web: Well, their lock up as we were discussing just the other week only ended on the first of October. Here we are barely in the middle of October and we actually already have an announcement there's going to be a follow on offering a secondary IPO, it's going to sell 14.8 million shares at least and of course, who are selling the bank's. Bear that in mind when somebody tells you that Euroclear is not going to be changing its ownership soon, or indeed, any other issue where the banks are major holdings holders, or indeed, any other issue with the banks are major holders of market infrastructure.

Meanwhile, we finally got a chance to listen to the TED Talk given a few months ago by the NASDAQ president, Chief Executive Officer Adena Friedman. Fascinating all together and excellent to see the parish are being represented by the TED community at the top level. Over in Moscow, they've approved the 2024 strategy and indeed also adopted a new dividend policy. 

Cum-Ex rumbles on the whole way through and meanwhile there was further talk about Macau. in one sense, there seems to be a lot of cynicism of the idea they can launch a stock market. While indeed by the end of the week, there was talking to Macau press itself about there being some sort of environmental market taking place on the separate former Portuguese colony, which is now of course also run once again by China. 

Singapore exchange, apparently eyeing smaller deals as the border merger world becomes much more complicated. And indeed, there's a possibility that Flutter could ultimately be forced to sell the Paddy Power business to survive competition scrutiny over their Stars group merger. 

Egypt has cut Stock Exchange fees in a bid to boost trading. And indeed, the Ethereum based prediction market Augar, one of the really, really early a theory and based decentralized markets that was a prediction market it has well been foundering of late: It's setting out plans for 2020 revamp.

Elsewhere in people news, in addition to the story about David Warren, who's going to be retiring from the London Stock Exchange group with a large bag of swag for as many years as CFO under Xavier and then laterly David Schwmmer with a period in the middle of course as interim CEO, we had news this week that over at HKEX David Graham the had of listing is going to retire at the end of 2019. And he's going to be replaced by Bonnie Y Chan. She's currently a partner in the corporate department of international legal firm Davis Polk, but was indeed previously an alumni of HKEX. Equally in the Special Administered Region, their top regulator Ashley Alder, somewhat expected, I think, he's going to be leaving next September. He's not going to take on a new contract having been in office since October 2011. Good luck to him and good luck also to Jen's Rick who's been appointed Chief Information Officer at EEX. Tadashi Tiago, he's joined the LSEG as head of Information Services Division for Japan, and indeed, TP ICAP in a move that demonstrates just how grown up the world of interdealer brokers formerly money brokers are these days, they've appointed Joanna Nadir as the Global Head of strategy. Wow, the shock of the new Ladies and gentlemen, a company once branded by a colleague of mine, “a great business, but they can't write cursive” has a new Global Head of strategy. That's a very grown up position for a company whose vocabulary used to extend beyond “Yours!” “Mine!” “Shag” and sundry expletives. 

In regulation news, there were various updates on fragmentation work by the FSB. ESMA were quite active... various speeches out there ...and also did a slap across the wrists on derivatives reporting, most notably for the UK, came out during the latter part of the week. In the US, the CFTC had statements about all manner of things during the course of the week. In technology news, CME Group are going to be offering their real time market data via the Google Cloud Platform. Very very groovy indeed. On the African continent, the Kenyan boss launched their new trading system to boost trading powered by Millennium IT the LSEG subsidiary. 

Meanwhile, over in product Euronext planning cash settled commodity contracts.All manner of people were bailing out of Libra, Actually, ironically, the idea that MasterCard and Visa and PayPal have now abandoned the Libra cryptocurrency possibly make me think that it might actually have a chance of surviving because why would they were going to survive with all of those legacy players who will exist on about 250 basis points? Really didn't actually make much sense. Saudi Arabia finally announced a delay to the Aramco IPO... And EUREX have been expanding their benchmark derivatives dividends with the new MSCI dividend futures contract. The LSE took us Back to the Future: SEAQ International about 1982. For all those who can possibly manage some deja vu, the London Stock Exchange has launched a global equity segment for trading in international securities. LIBOR, LIBOR, LIBOR as usual, and the big metals news: after a five year hiatus LME are going to be raising their trading and clearing fees by around 8% from January 2020.

10:13  

And that ladies and gentlemen concludes what is going to have to be a very, very short bulletin this week. I do apologize but my voice is actually going - I lost it entirely sometime between the last two podcasts! After two days of car racing commentary and joy watching the video of the modern classic Mdina Grand Prix lapb which is now on the Malta Classic Facebook page with yours truly commentating, I am going to bid you farewell and go off and prepare my vocal cords for a longer bulletin next week. This is Patrick L. Young. Thank you for listening. This has been the exchange invest weekly