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Citi - Climate Change Opportunities
Climate change has become an increasingly pervasive concern in our daily lives. While in the early days only scientists and researchers were raising concerns, over recent years governments and the general public have recognised the problem and are taking steps towards addressing it.
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Commerzbank - Vis Vitalis Life Settlements Index
Investors are constantly searching for new opportunities to improve portfolio returns and diversify risk. When pursuing new, profitable long-term growth solutions, intelligent risk-taking is paramount. In today's unstable global financial markets this is probably truer than ever before.
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Rabobank - Rabo Fastracks Indices: A New Benchmark for the Food & Agribusiness Industry
Donal Galvin, Rabobank’s global head of equity and fund derivatives, explains the drivers behind the bank’s new food and agribusiness (F&A) equity-linked indices, created to meet investors’ need for benchmarks in the agriculture sector beyond commodities.
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Commerzbank - Adding Value to Fund of Hedge Funds Selection and Management
Funds of hedge funds (FoHFs) have sometimes enjoyed a dubious image in the hedge fund industry. Charges against incremental fees and more recent issues relating to client liquidity have contributed to the problems of low returns compared with those of single manager counterparts.
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FTSE - Beyond a Regional Finance Hub: Singapore’s Domestic and Inward Investment Proposition
Fluctuation in market volatility has caused investors to adopt a cautious approach to equities investment in recent times. Stock markets around the world are showing unstable returns and general declines from this time last year as the true effect of the credit crunch lingers. The FTSE All-World Developed Index, for example, has dropped 12.1 per cent from July 2007 to July 2008.
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Citi - Quantitative Investing: the Citi Market Allocation Strategy
In the past 12 to 18 months there has been a noticeable increase in the number of “smart indices” developed by structured product providers specifically as underlyings for structured products. Smart indices are sophisticated trading strategies and models that have typically only been available to institutional investors in the past, and quantitative investment strategies are one particular type of smart index.
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Commerzbank - Bonus Certificates
Bonus Certificates were introduced to the European markets around 2003 and demand for this product has continued to be strong. It is being offered in countries like Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and both retail and private banking investors are active buyers. Interested investors can nowadays make use of various websites offering so-called bonus calculators which will assist them in choosing the right Bonus Certificate.
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Rabobank - Feeding the Appetite for Food and Agri Structures
Rabobank's Boon Yong Leo and Brady Sidwell explain how the global supply and demand pressures in commodities are creating interesting opportunities to structure tailor-made structured products for investors keen to access the food and agriculture boom.
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Citi - Equity Structured Products: 2007 Year-End Review
Structured products in Asia experienced explosive growth in 2007. Market statistics are difficult to compile, but we estimate from a combination of discussions with clients, competitors, and officially published statistics that US$200 billion to US$250 billion notional of product was transacted during the year. This amount compares with an estimated US$100 billion done in 2006 (according to Asiamoney), meaning growth rate in excess of 100 per cent year-on-year.
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Rabobank - Tapping Demand for Sustainable Investing
Donal Galvin, head of financial markets for Rabobank in Asia Pacific, is looking to leverage the bank's image and global strength in sustainable investing to exploit a growing demand for such theme-based equity and fund products across the region.
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Commerzbank - Rolling Reverse Convertible Strategy Index
A reverse convertible is a familiar instrument to many structured product investors. It is a short-term bond, typically with a tenor of a few months, which pays an enhanced coupon. In return for an enhanced coupon, the investor takes some form of downside equity risk. Many products have some form of “soft” protection on the downside, which means that losses are only triggered once the equity underlying falls below some specified level.
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Citi - Quant Investing in Asia
Quantitative investment management is now an established segment of the investment universe in developed markets, with an estimated US$1.5 trillion-plus of assets under management (AUM). In contrast, quant investment in Asia is still new; limitations on data, market liquidity issues and regulatory constraints have made practical implementation of the underlying models difficult in local markets.
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Rabobank - Preparing for Asia’s Fund Derivatives Boom
Asia poses huge potential for designing bespoke fund-linked products for a variety of clients — from private banks and asset managers to insurance companies and corporates, says Yin Wu, managing director and head of equity & fund derivatives for Rabobank in Asia.
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FTSE - Accessing the China Market Through Index-based Products
China has traditionally been a closed market with limited cross-border investment opportunities. However, in recent times, regulation has moved forward cautiously to enable investment into and out of the Mainland through the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) and Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) programmes.
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Commerzbank - Why Agricultural Commodities Are a Good Bet
Agricultural prices have been under pressure for many decades as a result of better harvest technologies, greater crop yields and high subsidies. Now the trend has reversed: while demand worldwide is rising, supply is limited, and this is driving prices upwards strongly.
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ABN AMRO - Taking CPDOs to the Next Level
Following ABN AMRO's successful launch of the first-generation Surf CPDO (Constant Proportion Debt Obligation) last year, Degas, the first fully bespoke CPDO, is now showing the way for the second-generation of such products.
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Citi - Capturing Outperformance
Investors will often have a view on the -ability of one asset to perform better than another. Outperformance products can be an efficient way to execute such a view while neutralising risks to overall market direction.
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Rabobank - Equity Innovation for Retail Investors
Rabobank is trying to position itself at the cutting edge of the structured equity markets to provide retail buyers with greater access to products and new markets, says Martin Wong, assistant director, equity derivatives.
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ABN AMRO - Taking CPDOs to the Next Level
Following ABN AMRO's successful launch of the first-generation Surf CPDO (Constant Proportion Debt Obligation) last year, Degas, the first fully bespoke CPDO, is now showing the way for the second-generation of such products.
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FTSE - Investing in Alternatives: Providing Options for a - Multi-Asset Portfolio Strategy
Only a few years ago, it was difficult to convince investors to allocate their assets to alternative asset classes beyond equities and bonds, but now “alternatives” is the latest buzzword in investment circles and is beginning to attract significant investment dollars.
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Reuters - Staying Ahead on Structured Credit
Elliott Hann, head of fixed income for Reuters in Asia, explains what the latest developments in the structured credit space globally mean for the region's investors — and how best they can prepare in this changing environment.
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Credit Suisse: Bringing Global Expertise Onshore
The successful launch and initial offering of Credit Suisse PL100 - World Water Trust (PL100 World Water), a novel investment product, marks a turning point in the development of the Bank’s structured products platform in Australia.
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nabCapital: Inflation-linked Swaps: Fixing Inflation For Certainty
Price appreciation or depreciation is a major risk facing any business or government which has contracted to pay or receive fixed nominal cashflows at either a single future date or a series of future dates.
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Citigroup: A Compelling Case for Principal Protection
The evolution of structured products has been rapid and impressive, growing in Asia from a mere US$5 billion business in 2000 to an estimated US$100 billion industry in 2006. Structured products are clearly becoming a significant part of an increasing number of investor portfolios, and every major investment category has a structured products analog.
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Rabobank: Asia's Growing Potential for Securities Finance
Rabobank plans to use its balance sheet and AAA rating to develop an innovative securities lending business across Asia, says Christopher Johnson, the bank's new regional head of securities & synthetic finance.
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Commerzbank: Investing in Commodities
The presence of commodities alongside equity, fixed income, credit and funds within a balanced portfolio is increasingly well established and represents one of the most significant emerging trends in today's financial markets.
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ABN AMRO - The New Frontier of Credit Innovation
The past six months have seen a leap forward in the development of the credit markets with the creation of arguably the most important new product since the introduction of single tranche collateralised debt obligation (STCDOs).
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FTSE: A Building Block to Innovative Investment Products
Investment options have increased significantly in recent years, and more and more investment banks are striving to differentiate themselves through capturing performance in different ways.
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Commerzbank - Life Settlements: A New Asset Class for Structured Products
In response to investor appetite for tailor-made payoffs on uncorrelated assets, Commerzbank has introduced a range of products which use US Life Settlements to generate investor returns. These returns are primarily driven by longevity and as such have a low correlation with traditional asset classes.
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FTSE - Indices as a Basis for Structured Products
Stock indices have developed over the last 20 years to become much more than economic indicators, and with growing developments in financial markets, more technical functions of indices have been brought to the forefront.
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Rabobank - Exploiting a Niche
Donal Galvin, Managing Director and Head of Global Financial Markets - Asia for Rabobank, explains the business strategy which he says sets Rabobank apart in equity and fund derivatives in Asia.
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