The euro was increasingly used as a funding currency by international borrowers in 2014 and early 2015, compared with the previous review period, while the share of the euro in foreign exchange reserves remained broadly stable. These are among the main findings of the report on “The international role of the euro”, which examines developments in the use of the euro by non-euro area residents in 2014 and early 2015 and was published today by the European Central Bank (ECB). Continue reading…

Policyholders should be willing to pay higher insurance premiums for contract certainty, according to an Airmic report on the importance of business-critical insurance launched at its annual conference. Produced in conjunction with PwC, it urges policyholders and insurers to raise awareness at board level of the strategic value of certain types of insurance. Continue reading…

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank decided today to maintain the provision of emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) to Greek banks at the level decided on 26 June 2015 after discussing a proposal from the Bank of Greece.

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Officials in the USA have announced an $18.7 billion settlement with BP that resolves years of litigation over the oil spill of five years ago.
The settlement announcement comes as a federal judge was preparing to rule on how much BP owed in federal Clean Water Act penalties after million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill resulted from the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers.

TARGET2-Securities (T2S), the Eurosystem’s landmark platform for securities settlement, started live operation on the 22 of June 2015. A first group of securities depositories and their user communities from Greece, Malta, Romania and Switzerland are now connected to T2S for settlement of euro transactions. Continue reading…

The presidents of five European institutions published a report entitled “Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union,” commissioned by leaders at the Euro Summit last October. The report, written by the presidents of the European Council, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Eurogroup and the European Central Bank, lays out a roadmap for further integration of the euro area. Continue reading…

By Peter Praet

Long-run growth, monetary policy and financing of the economy may seem like an unusual combination of topics, as it is often argued that monetary policy has no long-run effects. Monetary policy can however affect long-run growth in several ways. Continue reading…

Euro area systemic stress has remained low over the past six months, according to the latest Financial Stability Review of the European Central Bank (ECB), which was released recently. This also reflects ECB action that calmed fears of a too prolonged period of low inflation threatening to harm both price and financial stability.

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The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published an Opinion to the European Union (EU) institutions on the impact of EMIR on UCITS. In the opinion, ESMA calls for a modification of the UCITS Directive to take into account the clearing obligations for certain types of over-the-counter (OTC) financial derivative transactions under EMIR.
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Is your current system holding you back? Are you equipped for regulatory changes? We have conducted a survey exploring how much of a problem an outdated investment management system poses. System limitation and incompatibility with other technologies are just a couple of examples outlined by a great majority of asset managers.

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