Blog

Our experts frequently write blog posts about the findings of the research we are conducting.

Displaying 61-70 out of 75 results for "Structured Products".

Mis-sold Interest Rate Hedges

(Feb 2013)

The Financial Services Authority (FSA), Britain's highest financial regulatory agency, has ordered Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, and Royal Bank of Scotland to review all of their interest rate linked swap agreements sold to small businesses. In an investigation, the FSA found that four banks had violated at least one of its rules in over 90% of the 173 cases reviewed. The London Evening Standard is reporting that seven other banks may also launch similar reviews.

Interest rate swaps -- and related...

SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - February 8th, 2013

(Feb 2013)

Steven Harrold Settles SEC Insider Trading Charges
February 6, 2013, (Litigation Release No. 22613)
Afinal judgment was entered against Steven Harrold, former executive at a Coca-Cola bottling company, for his alleged insider trading "based on confidential information he learned on the job" concerning Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.'s planned acquisition of The Coca-Cola Company's " bottling operations in Norway and Sweden. "The judgment permanently enjoins Harrold from future violations of various...

Securities Class Action Filings Decrease in 2012

(Feb 2013)

Earlier this year, Cornerstone Research released 2012 review of Securities Class Action Filings in conjunction with the Stanford Law School -- see the press release. The report notes that the number of federal securities class action filings have decreased in recent years and, in particular, has fallen nearly 20% from 2011 to 2012. For the number of filings over the past sixteen years can be found below (Figure 2 in their report).

Cornerstone attributes the majority of the decline in class...

Oppenheimer to Pay US Airways $30 Million over Auction Rate Securities

(Feb 2013)

Oppenheimer & Co. has been ordered by a FINRA arbitration panel to pay US Airways $30 million in damages related to the purchase of several series of structured auction rate securities (ARS). The story is being covered by Caitlin Nish at the Wall Street Journal, Bill Singer at Forbes, and Keith Goldberg at Law360. You can find the US Airways v Oppenheimer award on our website.

ARS are debt instruments that paid interest rates that reflect the clearing prices of regular auctions. Oppenheimer...

Apple's Declining Stock Price and Structured Products

(Jan 2013)

Jason Zweig at the Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece on a part of the Apple story that hasn't gotten much press: many equity-linked structured products are linked to the common stock of Apple.

SLCG has recently completed an analysis of the market value of outstanding structured products linked to Apple common stock (AAPL). In the following figure, we plot the total quarterly issuance of AAPL-linked structured products in our database since the first quarter of 2009.

As Apple's common...

What a CDO 'Resurgence' Might Mean for Investors

(Jan 2013)

Kaitlin Ugolik at Law360 had an article on Wednesday discussing the recent "bump in demand for collateralized debt obligations." CDOs are complex derivatives that pool assets together and split the risk of that portfolio into tranches which are then sold to investors. CDOs have been implicated in the financial crisis of 2008 and have seen a strong drop-off in new issuances since, though that tide may now be changing.
According to the article, some lenders are predicting a large increase in...

European Traders May Face Financial Transaction Tax

(Jan 2013)

Earlier this week, eleven European countries were given the green light to implement a financial transaction tax according to an article from the Associated Press (AP). The story was subsequently picked up by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

According to the AP, the European Commission proposed "that trades in bonds and shares be taxed at 0.1 percent and trades in derivatives at 0.01 percent." Since these taxes will be based upon notional values for derivatives, the tax could be a large...

Structured Product Issuers Under Pressure to Disclose Estimated Value

(Jan 2013)

According to securities law firm Morrison & Foerster's Structured Thoughts newsletter, the SEC may soon require issuers of structured products to disclose the estimated value of the product on the front page of the prospectus. From the newsletter:

Elaborating on the [SEC's] sweep letter, the Staff noted that issuers must disclose the "issuer estimated value" on the cover page of the offering document, and share this information with investors prior to the time of sale. This estimated value...

SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - January 18th, 2013

(Jan 2013)

SEC Charges Georgia Resident with Insider Trading
January 17, 2013, (Litigation Release No. 22596)
According to the complaint (opens to PDF), John M. Darden III traded with non-public information regarding the merger between Southwest Airlines Company and AirTran Holdings, Inc. Darden, who gained over $150,000 in profits from the illicit trading, agreed to a final judgment that provides permanent injunctive relief and orders him to pay over $325,000 in disgorgement, pre-judgment interest, and...

Barrier Options

(Jan 2013)

Earlier this week we introduced binary options, a type of exotic derivative that is embedded in some retail structured products such as dual directionals. Today we're going to go over barrier options, which are another exotic option contract that happens to be embedded in one of the most popular types of structured products: reverse convertibles.

Like vanilla options, barrier options have a payoff that compares the final asset price to the strike price of the option. In addition, the payoff...

75 Results

<
1
...
5
6
7
8
>