For followers of the global equity crowdfund movement and fintech aficionados who are fluent in ‘what’s next?’, this is a big news week from the crowdfund world. Yesterday, MarketsMuse curators spotlighted a just-launched trading exchange that brings billions of dollars worth of private shares into the wacky world of secondary market trading. While there are rumored to be various efforts to package equity-crowdfunded ‘equity stakes’ into exchange-traded fund structures, which is arguably the “next great idea, “the first ETF for Equity Crowdfunding” has yet to be formally announced.
Before that announcement actually happens, today’s announcement from the multi-billion crowdfunding space (see link below) might be the data foundation such an initiative. and could very well be the vision spearheaded by this new portal, RaiseMoney.com.
MarketsMuse editor note: fully-disclosed, one of our favorite staff members was cited in this news story with the following comment
“Noted Pete Hoegler, senior analyst for financial industry blog, MarketsMuse.com, “The RaiseMoney.com platform has three critical elements in its favor. Firstly, they have a really compelling domain name that inspires immediate brand recognition.” Added Hoegler, “Secondly, this group has the benefit of not having “first-mover disadvantage” and most important, RaiseMoney.com is providing a much-needed service for a still nascent industry that is capturing the attention of millions of people and billions of dollars.”
Click below for the formal announcement distributed by NASDAQ’s GlobeNewswire
MarketsMuse FinTech curators feigned no surprise when noticing today’s announcement from the City of London profiling a new initiative just launched today that will accommodate equity crowdfund investors–a real, live exchange to trade out of equity crowdfund investments.
To paraphrase the opening observation from global crowdfund directory and search platform RaiseMoney.com…
“…From the “What Will Those Finance Wonks Think of Next?! Dept,” City of London investors (and the thousands of bank trading desk folks plying their trades down near Canary Wharf) are now getting an exchange to trade crowdfunded investments, as the UK’s first crowdfunding marketplace launches today….
Not to be confused with the London Stock Exchange, or the ubiquitous NYSE, Crowdfunding platform Crowd2Fund is opening “The Exchange”, where investors will be able to sell off investments made in equity crowdfund deals and access their capital.
Crowd2Fund, which launched in late 2014, is an FCA-regulated platform specialising in revenue loans. But trading on the new marketplace won’t be limited to investments made on this platform – it’ll be opened up to exchanges of investments made on any crowdfunding campaign.
Peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding is a booming part of London’s soaring FinTech sector. Crowdfunding campaigns grew a staggering 420 per cent in 2014, leaving the sector with growth of £1.74bn.
Many fixed income folks are lamenting about liquidity in the corporate bond market. LiquidNet, the institutional trading platform is determined to make corporate bond trading more liquid..for the buyside.
Just when you thought e-bond trading for corporate bonds was a never ending pipe dream…
Liquidnet Launches Fixed Income Dark Pool to Centralize Institutional Trading of Corporate Bonds
More than 120 asset managers across the US and Europe on-board for launch
Enrolled asset managers comprise two-thirds of top 50 holders of US corporate bond assets under management
September 29, 2015 08:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Liquidnet, the global institutional trading network, today announced the launch of their Fixed Income dark pool that facilitates direct, peer-to-peer trading of corporate bonds among asset managers in the US, Canada and Europe, creating a much-needed hub of institutional liquidity. Liquidnet has enrolled more than 120 asset managers, representing a critical mass of liquidity and a sizeable portion of assets under management for high yield and investment grade bonds in the US. At launch, the platform will enable trading for US and European corporate bonds (high yield and investment grade), emerging market corporate bonds, and European convertible bonds.
“Greenwich Associates research found that 80% of investors find it extremely difficult to execute large block trades; as such, a platform that can help ease that burden while not causing a shift in the trader’s workflow is a necessary part of the path forward.”
The Fixed Income dark pool has been designed to provide a seamless solution for corporate bond traders, providing them a protected venue in which to trade natural liquidity safely and efficiently. The platform has been built with input from Liquidnet’s network of leading asset managers and bolstered by the firm’s experience operating the leading dark pool for the institutional trading of equities. Similar to Liquidnet’s equities solution, the Fixed Income dark pool will provide the option for those corporate bond traders utilizing an order management system (OMS) to easily have their orders swept into the pool with minimal changes to existing workflow.
“The fixed income market has been woefully underserved by technology and, as concerns about a liquidity crunch continue to rise, it needs a transformation,” said Seth Merrin, founder and CEO of Liquidnet. “With close to 15 years of experience connecting asset managers around the world to solve the unique challenges of institutional equities trading, Liquidnet is uniquely positioned to provide a more efficient trading solution and experience that delivers a critical mass of natural liquidity that minimizes information leakage and maximizes best execution.”
Liquidnet has leveraged its relationships with partners and existing buy-side Member firms to ensure the platform’s success at launch. In June, the firm announced successful integrations with seven OMS operators that support direct connectivity, and a partnership with Interactive Data for continuous evaluated pricing to aid in pre-trade transparency and more efficient best execution analysis. In addition to new features, Liquidnet has also expanded its Fixed Income team and expertise with the recent high-profile appointment of Chris Dennis, formerly of BlackRock, as head of US Fixed Income Sales.
“The corporate bond market is desperate for innovation and improved efficiencies, and we’re starting to see several new trading platforms emerge,” said Kevin McPartland, Head of Research for Market Structure and Technology at Greenwich Associates. “Greenwich Associates research found that 80% of investors find it extremely difficult to execute large block trades; as such, a platform that can help ease that burden while not causing a shift in the trader’s workflow is a necessary part of the path forward.”
“Liquidnet Fixed Income was designed with significant input from the buy side to create the first true dark pool for corporate bonds,” said Constantinos Antoniades, Liquidnet’s Head of Fixed Income. “By facilitating a high-quality critical mass of participants, including two-thirds of the top 50 holders of US corporate bonds, Liquidnet will provide the most convenient, secure trading venue for institutional fixed income trading going forward.”
A recent survey of buy-side firms—comprising $12.15 trillion in assets under management—conducted by fixed income magazine, The Desk, stated that 58 percent of buy-side respondents indicated that they were planning to move to Liquidnet for their fixed income trading.1
The FinTech aka financial technology revolution continues to advance across the financial industry landscape, as dozens of startups from block chain to bond trading initiatives work towards securing a presence within the institutional financial services ecosystem. And, as profiled in a brilliant column this week from Institutional Investor spotlighted by MarketsMuse tech talk curators, the City of London is quickly carving out a leading role for being Europe’s epicenter for incubating the next greatest applications. The question now is, “How soon will London’s Silicon Roundabout squeeze out Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley?”
The excerpt from II’s Charles Wallace latest report, “FinTech Startups Flock to London’s Silicon Roundabout” is below. A link to the entire article follows accordingly.
Raja-Palaniappan
Raja Palaniappan worked at Credit Suisse in London as a bond trader for a number of years before deciding to go out on his own and launch an online marketplace called Origin Markets, which seeks to revolutionize private placement bond issuance by eliminating intermediaries like Goldman Sachs Group. Although American by nationality, Palaniappan decided to open his platform in London because he felt the city offered greater opportunity than New York or Silicon Valley for a new financial technology, or fintech, company (see “ Former Trader Raja Palaniappan Sees Fintech Opportunity in Bonds”).
“London does have a competitive advantage in fintech because you’ve got technology in Old Street and finance on Liverpool Street and they’re about three quarters of a mile apart,” Palaniappan says, referring to two areas of the City of London financial district. “In the U.S. technology lives on the Left Coast and finance on the Right Coast, and there’s little consolidation between the two.”
According to consulting firm Accenture, Europe is the world’s fastest-growing area for fintech funding, with spending rising 215 percent last year, to $1.48 billion. London had the largest share of that investment, some £342 million ($530 million), according to London & Partners, a government-funded agency supporting the London economy. Although the U.S. continues to lead overall fintech funding, with $2 billion in 2014, much of that was Silicon Valley–based investment in business-to-consumer start-ups like LendingTree, an online exchange that connects consumers with lenders; in London much of the activity is targeted at institutional financial services such as banking, insurance, trading and asset management.
“Since the Industrial Revolution, London has been the center for international commerce, and the melting pot that you have in terms of people and talent is pretty unique in the world,” says Sean Park, a Canadian who runs Anthemis Group, a firm that advises and invests in fintech start-ups from offices near Oxford Circus in Soho.
London’s growth as a fintech hub is not exactly surprising. The city is the world’s leading center for international wholesale financial services. It boasts more banks than Hong Kong or New York, leads the world in foreign exchange trading, has vibrant asset management and insurance sectors, and is home to the Eurobond market. In addition, fintech enjoys strong support from the British government, which sees the financial services sector as essential to the health of U.K. Plc and technology as critical to maintaining London’s competitive edge. Financial services employ some 2 million people, or about 7 percent of the country’s workforce, and generate 10 percent of the U.K.’s gross domestic product. Continue reading →
BrokerDealer-Banked Chat Service Symphony Signs Pact to Sing News from Dow Jones and WSJ
MarketsMuse Fintech editors are observing Rosh Hashana today, and we thank our friends at BrokerDealer.com blog for the following story..which could set the tone for a slug fest between Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. and Michael Bloomberg, the iconic founder of Bloomberg LP and 3-time major of New York City.
With merely a few days in advance of its launch, Symphony Communications, the instant-message platform backed by a consortium of Wall Street’s biggest brokerdealers and whose strategy is to undercut the seemingly irreplaceable Bloomberg-powered IM, announced that it has inked a deal with Dow Jones & Co to feed streaming News Corp.-owned Dow Jones News and Wall Street Journal content into the Bloomberg-killer service.
BrokerDealer.com is the host to the financial industry’s most comprehensive database of broker-dealers and provides information on brokerdealers across more than 30 countries worldwide.
According to the latest WSJ coverage, Symphony has won backing on Wall Street because it has been viewed as a potential lower cost alternative to a popular messaging service on Bloomberg LP’s terminals. The company has also made its encryption technology a key selling point for financial firms wary about sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.
The Palo Alto, Calif., company has secured $66 million in financing from 14 firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and BlackRock Inc.
It doesn’t take a “markets muse” who speaks in tech talk to know that Fintech is not only fashionable, its now mainstream. And, whilst the early “jibber jabber” surrounding Bitcoin was fodder for Wall Street naysayers, including JPM’s Jamie Dimon, “the worm has turned” according to NYT columnist Nathaniel Popper, a bitcoin expert and the author of “Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money.”
For earlier MarketsMuse coverage of the bitcoin and blockchain movement, click here
In Popper’s most recent NYT column profiling the cadre of banks, along with assortment of startups founded by banking expats, the fintech fascination is less about bitcoins as a currency, and all about the blockchain technology that powers the virtual currency.
MarketsMuse Editor Note: Though some of skeptics sitting on the MarketsMuse editorial stools suggest that these fintech applications should be targeting industries that actually embrace innovation, such as online gambling and adult entertainment, we won’t diss anyone by selling near-term straddles.
“…Nowhere, though, are more money and resources being spent on the technology than on Wall Street — the very industry that Bitcoin was created to circumvent.
“There is so much pull and interest on this right now,” said Derek White, the chief digital officer at Barclays, the British global bank, which has a team of employees working on about 20 experiments that explore how the technology underlying Bitcoin might change finance. “That comes from a recognition that, ‘Wow, we can use this to change the fundamental model of how we operate to create our future.’”
For people like Mr. White, Bitcoin isn’t just a digital token to use for online purchases. Instead, many of the top minds in finance have come to believe that the software that brought the virtual currency into existence also enables a fundamentally new way of transacting and maintaining records online — allowing people and banks to directly exchange money and assets like stocks and bonds without having to rely on a long chain of expensive middlemen…”
A few banks have gone public with their work, but most of the activity has been happening behind the scenes. At one private meeting, held in April at one of the Manhattan offices of Bank of America, executives from more than a dozen large banks gathered to confidentially discuss how the technology underlying Bitcoin could be used to change foreign currency trading, the largest financial market in the world, according to people who attended the meeting.
Central banks like the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have their own teams looking at the technology.
“A year ago, it was more of an idea,” said Max Neukirchen, the head of corporate strategy at JPMorgan Chase. “Now, it is a real opportunity. You test it and realize that this can play a big role in our thinking about how our own infrastructure will evolve.”
Who are the players to watch? Aside from the secretive projects inside of each of the 6-pack shops (including JPM!), major exchanges including NASDAQ and NYSE owner ICE are actively throwing resources at blockchain technology applications. On the startup scene, Dave Rutter, a former inter-dealer broker who was a head capo at Prebon Yamane, and then CEO OF ICAP before starting electronic broker LiqudityEdge is now wearing two hats via his role at blockchain wannabe R3CEV LLC. Not to be outsmarted is Mark Smith’s “Smart Securities” product, created by his startup Symbiont. Smith is the former co-founder and COO of Lava Trading and a certified tech wonk with a keen FX markets expertise. His company, with help from fintech merchant bank SenaHill Partners has so far outfoxed R3CEV by having already set the stage to facilitate the first corporate bond issuance using the blockchain technology.
For Nathaniel Popper’s latest commentary “Bitcoin Technology Piques Interest on Wall St”., please click here
MarketsMuse fintech update is a “bid on” to prior Wall Street bitcoin initiative coverage, and following is courtesy of excerpt from 4 Aug story by Bloomberg LP reporter Andrew Leising, ” Wall Street, Meet Block 368396, the Future of Finance.”
Justin Brownhill, SenaHill
When Justin Brownhill wants to check up on one of his latest investments through fintech merchant bank SenaHill Partners LP, he only needs to check the ledger unpinning bitcoin. The address: block 368396.
That’s the new digital home for the equity stake his firm made in Symbiont, a startup using bitcoin’s underlying blockchain software to make it quicker and easier to prove ownership of assets or transfer them between buyers and sellers.
Putting its money where its mouth is, Symbiont on Tuesday morning digitized and published several of its equity investments to the blockchain, which drives the bitcoin digital currency. That means the stakes will forever be part of that public record, allowing dividend payments or stock-option conversions to happen automatically.
“I woke up this morning and thought, ‘This is a historic moment,’” Brownhill, a managing partner at New York-based SenaHill, said in an interview after the Symbiont presentation on Tuesday. The merchant bank has investments in over a dozen other private companies. “Our job now is to go and espouse the benefits to all our portfolio companies,” he said.
Wall Street is becoming enamored with the potentially transformational way blockchain could overhaul how derivatives, bonds, loans and other asset classes work, dramatically simplifying the process of tracking ownership and accelerating the transfer of assets from one person to another.
Smart Securities
Symbiont’s innovation is creating what it calls smart securities. The company is now practicing what it preaches: its founders’ stakes as well as shares and options granted to employees have been converted into encrypted code that lives in the bitcoin blockchain — the same ledger where any purchases and sales of the digital currency are recorded. Symbiont customers can do likewise to track changes in ownership interests.
“Today is the day crypto joins Wall Street,” Symbiont Chief Executive Officer Mark Smith said to the room full of investors, bankers and reporters in New York. Representatives of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions were among the audience members.
Symbiont’s not alone in trying to bring the blockchain to Wall Street. Other firms investigating finance-related uses of blockchain include Digital Asset Holdings LLC, headed by former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker Blythe Masters; Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.; Ripple Labs; and the New York Stock Exchange.
In June, Symbiont raised $1.25 million from a group of investors including former NYSE chief Duncan Niederauer; former Citadel LLC executive Matt Andresen; two co-founders of high-frequency trading firm Getco LLC, Dan Tierney and Stephen Schuler; and SenaHill.
Introducing electronic trading to the corporate bond culture is not easy. Fintech initiatives have been trying to crack this egg for 20 years, each promoting the theory that enhanced transparency via electronic trading leads to enhanced corporate bond market liquidity, and ultimately, a robust marketplace for institutional traders to traffic corporate debt and/or via the classic inter-dealer broker business model.
So far, MarketAxxes, which launched in the late ’90s and is best known for bringing small size trades together (under $2mil notional) is one of few that have been able to survive. That said, electronifying the corporate bond market has witnessed several start-up cycles during the past two decades; this current decade counts more than one dozen initiatives; well, that count is “less one” when considering the following news from Finextra.com:
Bondcube, an electronic trading platform for corporate debt, has filed for liquidation just three months after going live.
The startup, backed by Europe’s largest exchange Deutsche Börse, was one of more than 30 new platforms that have emerged in the corporate bond market as a result of new regulations.
Under current capital rules, banks are restricted in the amount of corporate bonds they can hold on their balance sheet, despite the fact that the amount of outstanding corporate debt has risen by nearly 50% to $48 trillion since the financial crisis.
Bondcube and its fellow startups have tried to fill this gap in the bond market by providing buyers and sellers a centralised venue to trade electronically, akin to the various crossing platforms that have emerged in the equities market. The company’s CEO, former Citigroup trader Paul Reynolds, talked of the ambition to make Bondcube, the eBay of the fixed income market.
The problem has been that with so many platforms launching and the existence of longstanding incumbents like MarketAxess, some have struggled to gain the necessary traction.
In a statement, Deutsche Borse conceded that despite succeeding in launching, “sufficient business prospects failed to materialise” and consequently “the shareholders decided not provide further funding”.
Bondcube was formed in 2012 and launched in April this year. It completed its first trade in June, although there were signs that it may struggle for liquidity when a trader at UBS Wealth Management, one of the first participants on the platform, stated that it had taken more than two weeks to find a buyer on Bondcube.
Fintech startup instant message platform Symphony is hearing the sound of trumpets coming from NY Regulators and Bloomberg-challenger backed by consortium of banks now being questioned about deletion and encryption process.
MarketsMuse curators might be a little slow this week in view of following delayed post regarding the roll-out of the instant message chat platform built by a consortium of top banks and intended to displace their dependence on Bloomberg LP…but better late than never…As Symphony Communications Services prepares to launch its much-anticipated messaging service, New York’s financial regulator is raising questions about whether the system can assure that bank communication records will be preserved for overseers. The following is courtesy of American Banker.
NY State Regulator Anthony Albanese
In a letter to Symphony CEO David Gurle (blog post title image), Acting Superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services Anthony Albanese asked for further information about Symphony’s document retention capabilities, policies and features.
Noting that “key evidence that regulators used to uncover and investigate” benchmark manipulation schemes has been found in chat rooms, Albanese expressed concern that some banks that are under investigation for rate-rigging are investors in Symphony and have indicated they plan to use it. The letter suggests that before firms begin using a new platform for market related communications, Albanese wants to be sure regulators will still be able to access and audit communications in the event that a firm may be involved in suspicious activity.
The regulator is taking particular interest in “data deletion, end-to-end-encryption, and open source features” of the Symphony platform, the letter said. Albanese said the department would also follow up with banks, requiring them to describe “how they will ensure that messages created using Symphony products will be retained.” The department said it plans to review banks’ responses about their plans to assess whether or not encryption could be used to obstruct regulatory and compliance review, whether firms plan to use deletion capabilities, and whether banks can ensure that employees won’t use open source capabilities “to circumvent compliance controls and regulatory review.”
In an emailed response, Symphony’s Gurley said the platform was designed with compliance in mind, and said the company plans to fully explain Symphony’s technology and its capabilities to regulators.
“Symphony is built on a foundation of security, compliance and privacy features that were built to enable our financial services and enterprise customers to meet their regulatory requirements,” the statement said, according to American Banker. “We look forward to explaining the various aspects of our communications platform to the New York Department of Financial Services.”
Led by Goldman, a group of financial firms invested $66 million in Symphony. The group, in turn, acquired Perzo Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company founded in 2012. Goldman, which led the investment among the financial firms, contributed its own internal-messaging developments to the venture.
In addition to Goldman, Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., BlackRock Inc., Citadel LLC, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Jefferies LLC, Maverick Capital Ltd., Morgan Stanley, Nomura Holdings Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. invested in Symphony.
Disruptive Unbundlers, Securities Industry Untouchables, Fintech Aficionados and Innovative Altruists seek to level the investment research playing field, inspiring a bull market for independent research distribution channels, start-ups and disruptive schemes.
Investment research and expert ideas, whether within the context of equities analysis or global macro perspective, has long been the domain of sell-side investment banks, whose research insight is typically bundled as a ‘free product’ within the range of fee-based services provided, including trade execution. Those old enough to remember the ‘dot-com bubble’ days will recall that much of Wall Street’s so-called research was (and arguably still is) notorious for being heavily tilted towards “buy recommendations” in favor of the investment bank’s corporate issuer clients.
This clearly conflicted practice was perfected in the late ‘90s by the likes of poster-boy analyst Henry Blodget (since banned from the securities industry, and ironically, now Editor and CEO of financial media company Business Insider) and was lambasted by securities industry regulators when the “Internet bubble” burst. Those chasing-the-horse-after-the-barn-door-closed efforts since led to a regime of regulation and firewalls intended to distance in-house research analysts from their investment banker brethren so as to mitigate biased recommendations and conflicts of interest. Compliance officers across the industry found themselves facing a host of new rules, and that ‘compliance contagion’ served as the catalyst for a spurt in “independent research boutiques” offering “unbundled” and un-conflicted research sold as a stand-alone product with no ties to execution or trading commissions.
However compelling the notion, and despite the regulatory impetus to foster the growth of independent research boutiques, the business model for these firms has proven challenging during the past 10-15 years. Many boutique research firms floundered or failed for several crucial reasons, including but not limited to (i) the burdensome costs and means associated with creating a stand-alone brand, (ii) the challenge of delivering consistent and compelling content to institutional investment managers and sophisticated investors at a price point that could prove profitable and (iii) the non-trivial logistics required to deliver content in a compliant manner. In the interim, regulators stood by and observed, and digital delivery mechanisms for independent researchers only slowly evolved. Investment banks, never shy when it comes to creative workarounds, bolstered their research ranks and produced more content, even if mostly undifferentiated, but still promoted by the strength of the investment bank’s brand.
All of this is about to change again, causing some to conclude that regulatory market moves in cycles every decade or so, much like the stock market moves in cycles. The current bull market case for unbundled independent research is not a result of efforts by get-tough-on-Wall Street types such as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman or Massachusetts’ kindred spirits Elizabeth Warren and William Galvin, and the bull case is certainly not because of any efforts made by the SEC. To a certain extent, the positive outlook for those in the unbundling space is based on Moore’s Law and the advancement of Fintech-friendly applications, but it is more directly attributed to a new European Union law inspired by MiFID II, that if passed as expected, will require investment managers to pay specifically for any analyst research or related services they receive. With that new rule (which includes more than a few line items), many large money managers are starting to follow the proposed rules globally; investment banks in the U.S. (and obviously those in Europe) are devising new business models for one of their oldest and highest-profile functions: offering ideas to customers that banks can monetize through commission-based services.
More than some across the major continents believe that however much top investment bank brands are a decidedly powerful selling tool for research product, the power of the internet has enabled the distribution of independent research and enables a Chinese menu of pricing schemes via a continuously-growing universe of independent portals that invite content publishers to sell their products using an assortment of social media-powered distribution channels and revenue-sharing schemes.
Bloomberg LP has created its own independent research module accessible by 300,000+ subscribers in direct competition with Markit, the financial information services provider. Earlier this year, Interactive Brokers (NASDAQ:IBKR), the web-powered global online brokerage platform that provides direct market access to multiple exchanges and trading venues across the entire asset class spectrum quietly began enhancing its offering of third-party professional and institutional-grade research. IB’s 300,000+ accounts comprising professional traders and institutional clients may subscribe to research made available in the trading platform, Trader Workstation (TWS). At the same time, IB began promoting these third-party research providers via IB Traders’ Insight, a blog embedded within the firm’s Education module that covers the full range of investment styles from more than two dozen content providers.
While bolstering objective research content is a natural business extension for those having captive brokerage clients and for terminal-farm behemoths, perhaps even more interesting is that start-ups in the unbundling space are starting to percolate.
On the European side of the pond, UK-based SubstantiveResearch, created earlier this year by former EuroMoney Magazine publisher Mike Carrodus, is positioned to be an institutional research thought- leader that curates and filters both independent and sell side global macro research, with a sleeve that hosts regulatory events for investment manager content consumers and sell-side content providers. Start-ups in the US include among others, Airex Inc. , which dubs itself “the Amazon.com for financial digital content” and recently secured funding from fintech-focused merchant bank SenaHill Partners. TalkMarkets.com is another notable entrant to the space, and was created in late 2014 by Boaz Berkowitz, a former “Bloombergite” who was also the original brain behind Seeking Alpha. From the traditional financial media publishing world, industry stalwart Futures Magazine, recently re-branded as “Modern Trader” and the parent to hedge fund news outlet FinAlternatives is also embracing the research content unbundling movement as a means towards capturing more Alpha and better monetizing relationships with content providers. Each have their own business models, including the use of cloud-based technology and coupled with the muscle of creative online marketing, social media tactics and search-engine ranking techniques.
While the start-up space is often littered with short shelf-life stories, these new unbundled research distribution vehicles are being enabled by the fintech revolution and embraced by distributors of content, high-profile independent research providers, as well as by at least one major bank seeking to hedge its internal bets; earlier this year, Deutsche Bank inked a deal with upstart Airex, such that DB’s proprietary equity research is available on a delayed basis and can be purchased by any AIREX Market shopper. In the case of now 6-month old TalkMarkets, they are embracing an advertising-based business model, which is predicated on building an outsized audience of sophisticated retail investors for prospective advertisers. To date, they have enlisted more than 350 content providers and 10,000+ registered users. While there is no cost to access the platform, content providers are able to upsell subscription-based services and at the same time, earn ‘points’ that can be converted into the private company’s equity shares.
Neil Azous, Rareview Macro
According to former sell-side global macro strategist Neil Azous, the Founder/Managing Member of think tank Rareview Macro LLC, and the publisher of subscription-based “Sight Beyond Sight” which is now being distributed across several channels apart from the firm’s website (including via Interactive Brokers), “Truly superior, high-quality content, including actionable ideas remains relatively scarce, but the fact remains, content has become commoditized. The good news is that banks are not the sole source of carefully-conceived research and the better news is that conflict-free content publishers can now more easily distribute via a broad universe of narrow-casting, web-based channels.”
Added Azous, “For independent research providers and trade idea generators, it’s arguably a watershed moment. As new rules take shape, content publishers, including those who previously worked under investment bank banners, can now reach an exponentially larger universe of content buyers through these new distribution channels. It’s a numbers game; instead of working inside an investment bank and trying to ‘sell’ a traditionally high-priced product to a relatively narrow list of captive clients, the more progressive idea generators can re-tool their pricing and make their product available to exponentially more buyers, and in a way that conforms to and stays within goal posts of compliance-sensitive folks.”
However much it makes sense to foster the easy distribution of independent and un-conflicted research, Wall Street et. al. is not going to easily abrogate their role for providing ideas or forgo the trade execution commissions derived from those proprietary ideas. Banks are reported to be devising new pricing models for investment research in view of EU proposals that could prevent research from being paid for using dealing commissions. In an unbundled world, where payments are separated, competition for equity and credit research may increase as asset managers look beyond traditional sources, which may trigger fragmentation. They may also move research in-house. The U.K.’s FCA, which is driving the debate, has endorsed the EU proposals.
As noted within the most recent edition of Pensions & Investments Magazine, Barclays PLC, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG are working with clients to come up with pricing for the analyst research customers receive, according to bank executives. Prices are expected to range from roughly $50,000 a year to receive standard research notes, up to millions of dollars for bespoke research and open-door access to analysts.
“We are working to change the mind-set so that fund managers understand that research should be treated as a scarce resource. There is a great opportunity to tap into experts in their fields at brokers, but we need to really think about the value of research and determine the right amount to pay for it,” said Nick Anderson, head of equities research at Henderson Global Investors.
The following [excerpted] analysis is by Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Sarah Jane Mahmud and Alison Williams and helps summarize the current outlook. It originally appeared on the Bloomberg Professional service. Continue reading →
MarketsMuse is keeping its fingers on the pulse of the FinTech movement, and aside from the initiatives that we’ve spot-lighted taking place courtesy of Wall Street Wonks, its more than fair to say that London is fast becoming the hub of innovation and technology, and attempting to lay claim to the position as the fintech capital of the world, strengthening its place within the global financial market.
To put this into perspective, the UK is now the fastest growing region for fintech investment with deal volumes growing at 74% per year since 2008, topping $265 million in 2013 alone (Accenture). That’s twice as fast as its American counterpart Silicon Valley.
Commonly referred to as Tech City, London’s fintech cluster is now thriving, nurturing entrepreneurs, new business models and technologies. Last year alone, over 15,000 (UHV Hacker Young) new businesses were set up in EC1V, more than any other area in the UK. These are being celebrated and promoted with the help of new London initiatives such as the Fintech 50 and the first official Fintech Week.
Here are 3 of the top 7 tech start-ups that have added some air to the latest “tech bubble.”
Osper has come up with an innovative way to create a banking service than can be used by children, combining prepaid debit cards and smartphone apps controlled by both them and their parents. The approach could potentially reach a market underserved by most banks, but which may also be embraced by parents keen to educate their children early on about how to manage money.
Coinfloor is a new VC-backed Bitcoin exchange that prides itself on complying to strict anti-money laundering and “know your customer” procedures, despite the fact that Bitcoin isn’t classified as money by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
MarketsMuse special update-courtesy of MarketsMedia reporting with a refreshing reprieve from all-things Greece …While Silicon Valley salivates over the next social media-powered “Unicorn”, the global financial industry is fixated on FinTech. Just like the litany of aspiring app companies accelerating the ‘next great idea’ produced by West Coast Wonks, as noted in today’s coverage by the Wall Street-focused, tech-centric media platform, MarketsMedia.com, financial-technology startups need capital to turn their idea into a viable business, and more important in most cases, they need the right strategic advice to operate, expand and then potentially merge or sell the enterprise.
Venture capitalists and angel investors can provide initial funding; consultants can help with operations; investment banks can arrange additional capital raises and advise on M&A. SenaHill Partners is unique in that it has stitched together all that is needed over the ‘fintech’ lifecycle.
“Our merchant-banking value proposition connects the dots at every strategic level between global financial institutions and the entrepreneurial innovators of financial technology,” SenaHill Managing Partner and Co-Founder Justin Brownhill told Markets Media in a June 29 telephone interview. “We feel that we can get the right ideas in front of the right people better than anyone else. That’s the mission of our organization.”
Neil DeSena, Senahill Partners
As profiled by MarketsMedia.com, New York-based SenaHill, founded in 2013 by Wall Street veterans Neil DeSena and Brownhill, offers principal investing via its SenaHill Investment Group, LLC unit, and investment banking through SenaHill Advisors, LLC.
Wall Street is a relationship-driven business, a fact that is not lost on SenaHill. The company splits its formidable roster of talent into two categories: active advisors, formerly top people in the financial industry who can help startup and emerging fintech companies get the right exposure and introductions; and inactive advisors, who provide guidance, insight and background from their current positions in the industry.
SenaHill’s advisors include Stanley Young, formerly the chief executive officer of NYSE Technologies; David Ogg, CEO and founder of Ogg Trading; Joseph Wald, CEO of Clearpool Group; Sam Ruiz, an independent advisor and former head of equities trading at Nomura; and Craig Marshall, a start-up vet who is credited with creating the general-purpose prepaid category.
“As companies come to us, we can reach back out into the industry to these senior resources in our network and ask them about the space, the people, the product and more,” said DeSena, who headed REDI in 2000-2006, when the global multi-asset trading system was owned by Goldman Sachs.
For the full story from MarketsMedia.com, please click here
As reported by FINalternatives.com and extract below, MarketsMuse tech talk editors note that investments in financial technology (FINtech) deals nearly tripled in the United States in 2014, according to a new report by Accenture and the Partnership Fund for New York City.
The value of fintech investments in the United States soared to $9.89 billion in 2014, up from $3.39 billion in 2013.
This 191% increase dwarfs the increase in 2013, when fintech deal values in the United States climbed 68%. In New York, fintech deal values grew by 32% in 2014, to a new high of $768 million.
The report, Fintech New York: Partnerships, Platforms and Open Innovation was released Thursday at the FinTech Innovation Lab’s fifth annual Demo Day event in New York.
According to the report, global fintech investment tripled in 2014, to $12.2 billion, from $4.05 billion in 2013. By comparison, the overall market for venture-capital investing increased only 63% during that period.
“This past year marked a paradigm shift in how financial services companies approach and embrace fintech innovation, as they recognize the vast potential that this strong network provides,” said Robert Gach, managing director of Accenture Strategy Capital Markets. “An increasing number of banks and insurers are investing in connecting into the fintech ecosystem, whether through accelerator or incubator labs, venture investments or in other ways. We believe this explosive growth in fintech will help drive innovation within some of the world’s largest financial institutions.”
MarketsMuse editors are almost starting to lose count when it comes to the number of electronic trading initiatives from FinTech aficionados who purportedly intend to make the institutional corporate bond market more transparent, and hence more liquid..
Thanks to Liquidnet, the latest player to plug into the corporate bond market movement and throw their hat into the ring, there are now 15 (give or take) initiatives. We can only opine that those who believe that fragmenting marketplaces [particularly products that were never even centralized to start with] as a means to creating a competitive, transparent and hence liquid trading marketplace for institutional investors is at very best, counterintuitive. Some market structure experts might even go so far as to say this electronic bond free-for-all for market share is “completely assbackwards.”
Per coverage by Pensions & Investments Magazine, institutional trading network Liquidnet is set to launch an institutional dark pool for corporate bonds, in the third quarter this year. Best known as a dark pool provider for institutional equities trading, Liquidnet is integrating seven order management systems, which execute securities orders, to provide the connectivity and access to trading opportunities that are not currently available in the corporate bonds market. Liquidnet said in a news release Thursday the development will centralize “a critical mass” of corporate bond liquidity to market participants.
“By connecting to (clients’) existing order management systems, asset managers will have direct access to a protected venue that allows them to exchange natural liquidity with minimum effort and minimum information leakage,” said Constantinos Antoniades, head of Liquidnet fixed income, in the news release. “The functionality, protocols and connectivity of our dark pool will create significant new liquidity in the broader corporate bond universe — not just in the most liquid segment of the market.”
Upon reading the press release via Pensions & Investments Magazine, one electronic market veteran had this to say, “The long-held thesis that a centralized marketplace, where all orders are routed and displayed in centralized limit order books (CLOBS) is the best foundation to attracting liquidity and by definition, also provides true best execution for legacy OTC products is a notion that seems to have gone with the wind.” Added that Opinionator (who chooses to remain anonymous given his current Industry role), “It’s only mildly surprising that the regulators (i.e. SEC) have no clue as to the impact of their enabling an industry-wide gambit that will turn the corporate bond market into an electronic rats nest. Despite a 5-fold increase in outstanding issuance during the past several years, Dodd-Frank regulation has caused banks to step away from traditional market-making and risk taking, and consequently, the corporate bond market is only becoming increasingly more illiquid. More electronic platforms approved by regulators will simply make the corporate bond market even more fragmented and even less competitive.”
Tech Talk: Bitcoin’s Distributed Ledgers: A FinTech Innovation..
MarketsMuse Trading Technology/FinTech department profiles Wall Street’s rapid embracement of the tools that power Bitcoin with a look at Symbiont, a company that aspires to disrupt the capital markets process.
Distributed ledgers, the technology behind the Bitcoin blockchain, can be used to issue, trade and process an array of financial instruments on a single, global, decentralized peer-to-peer financial network. And guess what, Symbiont, a startup that’s backed by several high-powered Wall Street figures, has established a platform for so-called smart securities, or financial assets that are programmable versions of traditional securities, using the distributed ledger.
Early investors include Duncan Niederauer, former CEO of NYSE Euronext, and Matt Andresen, founder of the Island ECN. “Symbiont is bridging the gap between Wall Street and the emerging blockchain ecosystem,” said Niederauer, managing member of 555 Capital and a member of the Symbiont Board of Directors.”It’s an exciting, timely and much-needed development for the long-term health of the markets.”
Neil DeSena, Senahill Partners
SenaHill Partners, the recently-established fintech merchant bank led by former Goldman Sachs trading tech honcho Neil DeSena and former Citigroup tech titan Justin Brownhill will serve as Symbiont’s business development agent. “SenaHill Partners is focused on fintech companies, and specifically on assisting a transition from analog-based financial services into technology-based financial services,” Smith said. “All of our access into the Street comes through SenaHill, so SenaHill is an important part of the Symbiont story.” SenaHill Partners also served as merchant bank and deal advisor to Livevol, the provider of equity and index options technology and market data services. During the first week of June, Livevol entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by options exchange CBOE Holdings, Inc.
“The real value of this new technology is in the underlying protocol, the distributed nature of the Bitcoin blockchain, and the immutable nature of its ledger,” says Symbiont CEO Mark Smith. The distributed ledger is “a way to create new securities that could solve some of the problems that existed in the more opaque, less transparent, less liquid markets,” Smith said.
“We have launched Symbiont to create a generic platform that can operate on multiple types of cryptographically protected distributed ledgers to create what we are trade marking Smart Securities,” said Smith. “It’s a digital security that can be programmed with all the terms and conditions of a financial instrument. Once issued on a block chain, it can act autonomously to execute and extract terms and corporate actions without any human intervention.”
MarketsMuse sends a shout-out and thumbs up to June 18 reporting of this story by MarketsMedia.com
One of the biggest investment banks on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, is making a change to its business model–adopting what seems to be tactics advanced by startups.
Soon, Goldman will offer loans online to both consumers and to small businesses as it looks to tap into a marketplace worth nearly $850 billion. The new unit will offer the loans through a website or an app — functioning like a virtual bank in one of the oldest companies on Wall Street. Without the costs of bank branches and tellers, Goldman can lend the money at lower interest rates while still making a profit. The company hopes to be ready to make its first loans next year.
It’s a big change for Goldman’s business model — before, the only people who could obtain a loan from the bank were its high-net-worth clients.
Goldman can establish a consumer lending business now because it converted from being an investment bank into a bank holding company during the financial crisis. It also allowed Goldman the opportunity to interact more directly with consumers.
Goldman Sachs did not comment when asked about their business plan explored by this New York Times’ story.
MarketsMuse Tech Talk update profiling Wall Street’s latest embracing of Bitcoin technology and a look at 11 May announcement from NASDAQ is courtesy of extracts from CNN.com and WSJ.
The Nasdaq stock exchange is tapping Bitcoin’s powerful new transaction technology to create a more secure, efficient system to trade stocks. Step 1: Pilot to take place in fledgling Nasdaq Private Market.
High-tech bankers are starting to realize Bitcoin could revolutionize trading. Nasdaq (NDAQ), a favorite exchange among many technology companies, is making the first move.
On Monday, the stock market announced it will start using a blockchain system to keep records for its Nasdaq Private Market, which handles trading of shares in the pre-IPO phase before a company goes public.
Nasdaq sees the blockchain’s perfect recordkeeping as a major step in the right direction for more transparency. The pre-IPO market doesn’t typically see as much trading and what does occur is often by a tight circle of employees and early investors.
MarketsMuse.com Tech Talk update profiles the latest news flash for FinTech wonks: Whilst the securities industry landscape continues to debate the “dark pool vs. lit market” topic, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is taking a chapter from the behometh brokerdealer universe with their own scheme to introduce a dark pool, but the regulated LSE proposes to make their platform a ‘non-profit utility”. Below is courtesy of extract from Bloomberg LP reporting. MarketsMuse Editor’s note: Our MM title editor apologizes to those who might be confused by the reference to the once notorious Manhattan NY gathering place for those seeking to keep their wild side ‘dark’..but we thought it was a fun title nonetheless.. Continue reading →
Venture capitalists and angel investors can provide 
