Spectrum adds Unicredit to pool of issuers

Spectrum Markets has onboarded UniCredit Bank as the newest member of its pan-European trading venue for securitised derivatives.

‘As retail investors increase in both number and sophistication, it is more important than ever that we stay agile around their needs – developing innovative, tailored investment solutions that enable them to take varied exposures over different time horizons,’ said Marco Formaggio, head of equity & brokerage sales, UniCredit.

The bank will expand the product mix overtime to include short-term, leveraged, and longer-term investment products – with the bank providing liquidity as a market maker.

MerQube UK receives FCA authorisation as benchmark administrator

Unicredit will initially list a range of constant leverage warrants and covered warrant products, which will be available to retail investors across Europe via banks and brokers. Underlyings will include the most popular European and US equities and indices, with a particular focus on Germany.

Spectrum has scaled up its flexible infrastructure to handle the additional volume of order flow and quote data, increasing capacity by over 400% – as part of its strategy to host a focused suite of products linked to the most actively traded underlyings.

MUFG partners with UK fintech

MUFG and Origin have launched Origin Documentation, an automated solution for the Japanese Bank’s equity-linked structured notes product offering.

The documentation product forms one part of a broader drive for increased efficiency and improved client experience being led by MUFG’s structured solutions team in Emea and supported by the international equities trading team.

Driven entirely by APIs for both the inputs and outputs, Origin automatically produces term sheets, final terms, and internal execution files for structured note issuance and associated equity-linked exotic derivatives. The new solution supports any equity or index-linked structures, with full flexibility for both cash and physical redemptions, knockin and knock-out conditions and more. MUFG acts as underwriter, structurer and arranger for all self-issued equity linked structured notes.

Origin and MUFG partnered to design and develop the solution through 2022, building upon Origin’s documentation product for vanilla debt issuance.

The platform will completely automate the bank’s issuance process involving teams across sales, structuring, operations, and legal, sitting in both Apac and Emea.

The subsidiary of the US technology provider for indexing and rules-based investing, has been authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to carry on the regulated activity of administering benchmarks under Article 34 of the Regulation (EU) 2016/1011/EU) – Benchmarks Regulation (UK BMR).

The FCA authorisation will allow MerQube to provide benchmark services to its clients in the UK, stated the firm on 18 May.

'By successfully registering for this globally respected regulation we can further accelerate our plans to roll out the provision of high-tech support and services to our indexing clients in the UK and throughout Europe,' said Roby Muntoni (pictured), CCO at MerQube and CEO at MerQube UK.

SRP registers 724 retail structured notes linked to three Merqube indices – the MerQube US Tech+ Vol Advantage Index (443 products, US$238.4m), MerQube US Large-Cap Vol Advantage Index (215, US$73.9m) and MerQube US Small-Cap Vol Advantage Index (66, US$0.16m).