Mathilde Fox & Stephan Van Lerberghe

While the Basel 2 agreements envisaged a more risk sensitive approach to define capital requirements, the recent financial crises highlighted the need for more capital of better quality. Indeed, financial regulators are now focusing on the capacity of equity and other subordinated liabilities to bear losses in case of bank failures. From this environment emerged an exotic named bond: the so-called “CoCo” bond. Although it sounds tropical, the first one was issued in Europe by Lloyds in 2009. Since then several banks have been joining the CoCos’ issuers rank. In Belgium, KBC was the pioneer by issuing a 1Bn USD CoCo in January 2013. Continue reading…

Settlements have been reached with eight airlines in a class action lawsuit involving the price of airline tickets. The Settling Defendants are: Air France; Cathay Pacific; Japan Airlines; Malaysian Airlines; Qantas; Singapore Airlines; Thai Airways; and Vietnam Airlines. The lawsuit continues against five Non-Settling Defendant airlines: Air New Zealand; All Nippon Airways (“ANA”); China Airlines (Taiwan); EVA Airways; and Philippines Airlines.
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Duisenberg school of finance (DSF) will integrate its education programme with the honours programme of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and VU University Amsterdam (VU) by 1 September 2015.

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ECB Banking Supervision recently issued a recommendation to banks on their dividend distribution policies for the financial year 2014 as part of its aim to strengthen the safety and soundness of the euro area banking system. The ECB has also notified banks that variable remuneration will be thoroughly reviewed in the coming months.

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SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. (“SS&C”) (Nasdaq: SSNC), a leading global provider of financial services software and software-enabled services, and Advent Software, Inc. (“Advent”) (Nasdaq: ADVS), a leading provider of software and services for the global investment management industry, recently announced that the Companies have entered into a definitive agreement wherein SS&C will acquire Advent. Under the terms of the agreement, SS&C will purchase Advent for an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion in cash, equating to $44.25 per share plus assumption of debt.

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Sharing key payment trends and best practices from a global perspective but with dedicated focus on the EMEA region. The EPCA Payment Summit is a 2 day conference for top delegates from banking and financial, payments industry. Running in its 14th edition now, it is a leading discussion platform for professionals in this space. For more than ten years, over 1500 leading professionals have been gathering together at the EPCA Payments conference. This proves the importance of exchanging innovation and overall payment experience in the wholesale and consumer marketplace. The purpose is to be a top level environment for the exchange of business insight and networking. The conference is completely organized by and for professionals, ensuring the highest level of quality in all aspects.

More information:  www.epcapaymentsummit.com

Velocimetrics, a provider of real-time business performance monitoring and analysis solutions to the global financial community, recently announced its technology partnership with Solace Systems, the leading provider of hardware-based messaging middleware. This partnership demonstrates Velocimetrics’ ongoing commitment to ensuring that TipOff® continues to excel in enabling users to independently monitor and analyse their middleware messaging activities, which form the very fabric on which the industry’s trading systems are built.

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Police analysts forecast the time they spend on cybercrime will treble over the next three years but only 30% believe they have the skills and tools to tackle cybercrime effectively, according to a survey from PA Consulting Group.

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With the launch of euro zone quantitative easing on January 22, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi hopes to have delivered on his pledge to do “whatever it takes” to safeguard the region’s prospects. It was not quite a design classic but it was a feat of engineering nevertheless. The quantitative easing programme unveiled by ECB President Mario Draghi on last Thursday was – save for a few missing components – a pretty impressive machine. Continue reading…