Tokyo, home to Asia’s largest capital markets, is also wonderful in May, and was a perfect location for two recent Celent roundtables. The first was Exchange Panel: Drivers of Innovation and a Market in Transition. We invited Executives from five major global exchanges; CME Group, JPX Group, Korea Exchange, NYSE Euronext, and Singapore Exchange Limited. Representatives from both Asian and global exchanges discussed changing equities derivatives market structures, business models, challenges,...

While our capital markets group has been focusing on derivatives and fixed income of late, due to regulatory and technology drivers, the businesses supporting equities markets continue to go through their own wrenching changes. With the equities business having persistently low revenue growth, stubbornly high costs, and capacity challenges, a new wave of thinking is required to get the business out of the mire. Until business improves, managers are no longer tolerant of high IT and operational...

Celent Senior Analyst Joséphine de Chazournes This event is free to attend for Celent clients, flex-plan clients, and the media. Non-clients can attend for a fee of US$250. If you are unsure of your client status, please contact Andrew Renzella at arenzella@celent.com or at +1.617.262.3124. Please click here for more information.

Yesterday, Pew released a study showing that in 4 of 10 households with children, women are the sole or primary source of income for the family.  One must wonder whether advisors have grasped this. In speaking with several banks, vendors, and brokers, it is clear that advisors still consult husbands much more frequently than they consult the wife, even when both spouses work.  This is increasingly out of touch. I have yet to see any compelling data as to whether financial planning or investment...

In line with the market’s deliberations around systemic risk, central clearing, and its subsequent impact to demand/supply dynamics around collateral assets, BIS Committee on the Global Financial System recently released a paper on “Asset encumbrance, financial reform and the demand for collateral assets“ on 27th May. As I poured through the pages of this well-constructed report, there were a couple of “Uh Oh” moments in my head as I examined the paper’s key...

After providing a ranking of the North American weath management platform vendors, I have been looking at vendors across Europe. There are a number of interesting findings that will be discussed in greater detail once the report is released. Here are a couple of the initial findings: 1. European vendors by-and-large have strong functional support of discretionary wealth management; however, there is less funtional support around advisory models. That is to say, front office modules often focus...

Celent Research Director Cubillas Ding This event is free to attend for Celent clients, flex-plan clients, and the media. Non-clients can attend for a fee of US$250. If you are unsure of your client status, please contact Andrew Renzella at arenzella@celent.com or at +1.617.262.3124. Please click here for more information.

Celent Senior Vice President Axel Pierron and Analyst Alexander Camargo Admission to the event is free, but is only open to qualified securities firms. If you are unsure of whether or not you should attend this event, please contact Andrew Renzella at arenzella@celent.com or at +1.617.262.3124. Please click here for more information.

Last week the media was inundated with the very interesting news that EBS (part of ICAP), one of the leading global wholesale FX electronic platform, was starting a consultation with its clients to change its business model: it would potentially remove the “first in, first out” (remember that FIFO rule in accounting?), for entry order and put a system that batches together all orders that arrive in a given millisecond-based window so that there is no speed advantage for incoming...

On my walk into work this morning I was thinking about the new Google Glass. Marc Andreessen announced he was impressed with it and would be funding new application developments for Glass. This got me thinking- what types of apps could be created for the securities and investments industry for Glass? In one sense, Glass could simply be the next mobility device- a device that people bring to work with them (BYOG- bring your own glass) and which allows them to be remote from their...