|
|
FX Trader Jailed, Ordered to Surrender Submarine
Minnesota resident Trevor Cook was imprisoned for violating a court order by
dissipating money and failing to surrender more than $35 million in assets. The
Commodity Futures Trading Commission says he committed $190 million in foreign
currency fraud.
The judge ordered that he remain in jail until he relinquishes $27 million
located in offshore accounts, a BMW and two Lexus cars, a submarine, a
houseboat, a collection of expensive watches, a collection of Faberge eggs and
$670,000 in cash.
Among other charges, CFTC claims that Mr. Cook, syndicated radio host Patrick J.
Kiley and the other defendants misappropriated millions of dollars of customer
funds and used the money to purchase property, develop a hotel and casino in
Panama, buy seven luxury cars, a house boat and a submarine and to finance their
frequent gambling.
Illinois CTA Charged with Fraud
The CFTC accused Jay Nolan of Illinois and his company, Lodge Capital Group LLC,
of commodity pool fraud. He solicited about $3.9 million from at least five
individuals for a commodity pool he operated. Allegedly he misrepresented the
pool’s profitability, sent false account statements and misappropriated money in
the form of incentive fees to which he was not entitled because of the pool’s
losses.
Barcap Structured Notes Fuel Brazilian Funds
Barclays Capital says two Brazilian asset managers raised more than BRL300
million via principal-protected notes launched in the local market in late 2009.
The notes are based on Barclays Capital commodities indexes.
In one case, a Brazilian manager started a carbon fund, getting access to carbon
markets
through the Barclays Global Carbon Index. Another Brazilian fund is designed to
gain from oil price increases but protect investors’ capital when oil prices
fall.
"Investors in Brazil are increasingly seeking diversification through
commodities but need vehicles that offer domestic access to these global
markets," stated Philippe Comer, head of commodity investor structuring,
Americas, Barclays Capital. He says the goal is to deliver Barclays’ commodities
expertise to asset managers.
Roge Rosolini, managing director for emerging markets structuring at Barclays,
says they want to ensure that the underlying structures are well understood and
are working with
clients to create suitable investor education programs.
Barclays Capital is a global leader in commodity-linked notes, with more than
US$7.9 billion issued in 2009.
FTC Returns Home, Plans New Fund
Austrian managed futures firm FTC Capital closed its Bahamas management
subsidiary, FTC Asset Management Bahamas Ltd., consolidating all its activities
in Vienna. Funds open to the public were already domiciled in the EU, but now
the fund manager itself will be subject to European regulation.
FTC founder Eduard Pomeranz says he is relocating the management and
institutional mandates to Vienna in response to increased demand for
transparency and regulation.
“Offshore is a term which is seen increasingly negatively in connection with
asset management. This is why we relocated all our own funds in the EU in recent
years,” he says.
Other changes are in the works. FTC plans to launch a macro fund in
mid-February. Like all FTC programs, the macro strategy will be purely
systematic. It will target low-volatility alpha returns and initially be
restricted to professional investors.
“We will also be continuously developing additional trading systems for this
product, as well as for our trend following and stock strategies, which will
make it possible to scale up the fund virtually without limit,” Mr. Pomeranz
says.
Another change: starting February the flagship FTC Futures Fund Classic will
have daily liquidity – previously it was weekly – and the notice period of one
or more days will be waived. Rapid processing of subscriptions is possible
because the futures exchanges on which the fund trades are themselves extremely
liquid.
To make it more appealing to smaller investors, the fund’s investment minimum is
being lowered from EUR 10,000 to EUR 5,000.
Altegris Taps Man Executive
Kirk Strawn, former director of intermediary sales at Man Investments, joined
Altegris as national director of strategic relationships, to work with
registered investment advisers, trust companies, third party asset managers and
broker-dealer firms.
Altegris, led by Jon Sundt, specializes in research on alternative investments
and connects investment professionals and individual investors with select CTAs
and hedge funds. It has allocated more than $2.4 billion at trade level.
Dubai Trading Grows, New Contracts Coming
The Dubai Mercantile Exchange says trading volume increased 69% in 2009 and the
continued tightening of bid/ask spreads allowed the entry of new participants.
Physical delivery of DME contracts averaged 8.7 million barrels of oil per
month, reaching a record of 11.6 million barrels in September.
During the year, DME contracts were integrated onto the CME Globex electronic
platform, which allows access to the world’s three crude oil benchmarks. The DME
Oman contract is developing as the third global crude oil pricing benchmark. In
2009 it was adopted as the basis for setting the Official Selling Price for
Dubai crude by the Dubai Department of Petroleum Affairs.
The exchange intends to launch four new DME Oman-related contracts in 2010, all
cash settled— an Oman swap, a Brent-Oman swap, an Oman average price option and
an Oman European-style option that will be available for trading on CME Globex.
Newedge Joins Nodal, Gets Korean License, Reorganizes
Global brokerage Newedge Group became a clearing member of Nodal Exchange, a
pioneer in offering location-specific futures contracts in the North American
electric power markets. Nodal was launched in April 2009 with LCH.Clearnet as
the central counterparty clearing house. Newedge is a member in LCH.Clearnet.
Ann Sacra, chief operating officer of Nodal, says Newedge has significant
presence with power hedgers and financial entities who want to trade on the
exchange. “Trading is continuing to grow, and we are excited to be adding
Newedge with their broad customer base to allow new companies the opportunity to
participate on our exchange,” she says.
Separately, Newedge became the first foreign broker to get a full futures
license from the Korea Financial Services Commission, out of 19 foreign
companies that have applied for the license. This allows Newedge Korea to expand
its offerings.
“Our clients expressed a lot of interest in the 3-Years KTB Future and USD/KRW
Future,” says Newedge Korea managing director Kevin Lee. He says they expect
also strong demand from local clients to trade the futures and options products
that Newedge can offer through its global network of 85 exchange memberships..
In another development, Newedge named Pierre Gay, who headed Asia Pacific region
operations, as the head of fixed income, currency and commodities. Laurent Cunin
is replacing him in Hong Kong as head of the Asia Pacific business.
Mr. Cunin was acting CEO Americas and head of sales Americas, but previously he
spent eight years in Asia and until 2005 led Fimat’s Tokyo office.
“These appointments reinforce our intention to offer our clients a range of
products which are consistent between the different geographical regions,”
Newedge chief executive Patrice Blanc says. “Our global product offer will have
more coherence and consistency between the different regions, including Asia
Pacific, the Americas and Europe and Middle East.”
Newedge is a member of 14 derivatives exchanges in Asia Pacific and has leading
market shares in Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. It has been
developing business in emerging Asian exchanges— Taiwan, Korea, India and China
in a two-year old joint venture with the CITIC Group.
|
RSS
