News Centre

Hong Kong Securities And Futures Commission Publicly Censures Wonderful Sky Financial Group Holdings Limited And Liu Tianni And Publicly Criticises Liu Kiki Ching Tung For Breaching The Code On Share Buy-Backs

Date 17/03/2022

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has publicly censured Wonderful Sky Financial Group Holdings Limited  and Liu Tianni and publicly criticised Liu Kiki Ching Tung for breaching the Code on Share Buy-backs.

Microsoft For Startups And Ansarada Announce New Global Partnership

Date 17/03/2022

• Microsoft for Startups and Ansarada unite to make it easier and faster for startups to raise capital and grow
• Ansarada is the first third-party technology vendor to forge a global partnership of this kind with Microsoft for Startups
• Ansarada’s suite of solutions offered to every participant of Microsoft for Startups global program

Levelling The SPACs Playing Field: Investors Call For More Transparency And Better Investor Protection - Report On SPACs From BETTER FINANCE & CFA Institute: Impacts On Transparency, Information Disclosure, Investor Protection And Supervision

Date 17/03/2022

Although SPACs - Special Purpose Acquisition Companies - have existed for quite some time, their sudden popularity over the last few years has drawn the attention of investors and regulators alike. In their latest joint report, BETTER FINANCE and CFA Institute shed light on the debate around SPACs also known as “blank cheques companies”. Based on the input from professional and retail investors and the overall findings of their joint study, BETTER FINANCE and CFA Institute believe that SPACs represent an important tool for the growth of EU capital markets, providing an alternative to traditional IPOs and a faster way for companies to go public. However, safeguards should be in place. The report discusses ways to preserve investor protection for retail investors and calls for more transparency on SPACs in the EU market. It introduces ways to address information disclosure and incentive structures in SPACs.  

MONETA Wins Celent Model Bank 2022 Award For Card Modernisation Initiative With Fiserv - Shift To An Outsourced SaaS Approach Anticipated To Reduce Operational Costs By 30% While Furthering Bank’s Digital Transformation Strategy

Date 17/03/2022

MONETA Money Bank, one of the largest banks in the Czech Republic, has won a Celent Model Bank 2022 Retail Payments Transformation award for its card modernisation initiative. The strategically planned and precisely executed initiative, undertaken with Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading global provider of payments and financial services technology, will enable the bank to cut operating costs by 30% within five years and further its digital transformation.

Bitfinex Lists Gala Games Amid Crypto Gaming Boom

Date 17/03/2022

Bitfinex, a state-of-the-art digital token trading platform, has listed Gala (GALA), a decentralized gaming ecosystem. The addition of GALA broadens Bitfinex’s support for gaming tokens, a sector poised for significant growth this year amid an explosion of interest in digital gaming and Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

X-Margin’s Credit Evaluation Will Reduce The Inherent Risk Of DeFi Lending By Providing Greater Visibility To Lenders Using The Atlendis Protocol

Date 17/03/2022

Atlendis, a capital-efficient DeFi lending protocol that enables crypto loans without collateral, is partnering with X-Margin, the credit oracle risk engine for trading firms and institutions, to enable capital-efficient crypto borrowing and lending. The partnership will accelerate the adoption of uncollateralized loans on the blockchain, by using proven methodologies to reduce the inherent risk of DeFi lending.

ETC Group And HANetf Launch Europe’s First Metaverse ETF Tracking Solactive Index

Date 17/03/2022

The Metaverse has already attracted billions of dollars of investment, with the potential of $8.3 trillion total consumer expenditure in the US alone and a potential market size of $12 trillion globally – according to banks, Morgan Stanley1 and Goldman Sachs2. Many big techs start to see this revolutionary concept as their next direction of development. Now Solactive is pleased to announce that HANetf and ETC Group have launched the first metaverse thematic ETF in Europe, the ETC Group Global Metaverse Equity UCITS ETF (ticker: METR), tracking Solactive ETC Group Global Metaverse Index (Net Total Return).

BME And BBF Fintech Launch The Second Edition Of Hack & Disrupt! And Leverage Bilbao As A Fintech Innovation Centre

Date 17/03/2022

• The hackathon, during which challenges on sustainable finance will be solved on 1 and 2 April in Bilbao, will award 5,000 euros in prizes
• The second edition leverages the Bilbao financial centre as a hub for innovation and technological discussion in the financial sector

BIS: Anchoring Of Inflation Expectations: Has Past Progress Paid Off?

Date 17/03/2022

Key takeaways

• In the decade before the pandemic, inflation expectations became less volatile worldwide, as well as more consistent with inflation targets and less sensitive to inflation surprises.
• This progress has paid off for many economies during the past year's surge in inflation: long-term expectations have remained largely anchored, but with notable exceptions.
• Anchored expectations provide room for monetary policy manoeuvre, but how strongly they remain anchored will depend on central banks keeping inflation in line with their stated objectives.

Deal Activity In Asia-Pacific Down By 16.8% In February 2022, Finds GlobalData

Date 17/03/2022

The ongoing global geopolitical issues and volatile market conditions continue to pose downside risk to the deal activity (mergers & acquisitions [M&A], private equity, and venture financing deals) for the second consecutive month across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. As a result, deal activity has taken a 16.8% hit during February 2022, reveals GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.