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181 Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast February 18th, 2023

My name is Patrick L. Young Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest It’s the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 181

This week in the parish of exchanges and market structure:

Binance Pushing For An SRO while we ponder Is BNB short for “Bank Noose Binance?”

As Euroclear enjoys a Record Year,  is ICE Facing a Black Knight Spin Off?

…While we’re looking forward to Options at Tadawul and CBOE spreading their options products across Europe…

My name is Patrick L. Young

Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest

It’s the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 181

Good day ladies and gentlemen, from a slightly windy studio today this is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in market structure. All the analysis of the many events and happenings from the past 7 days can be found in Exchange Invest’s daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.

More details at ExchangeInvest.com.

Over in the distributed chaos of Bitcarnage, crypto is getting divorced from its banking counterparts.

Binance now appears to be entirely out of US dollars for instance, while there are now Luxury Rehab Centres Now Offer Therapy For ‘Crypto Addiction’ according to BBC News. That if nothing else reminds us this has been a millennial centric bubble despite some of us doing electronic money for decades.

The Superbrawl – America’s largest festival of TV advertising passed last Sunday and it was a crypto-free year, unlike the 2022 ‘bitcoincathon’

But above all else, the news this week in Bitcarnage: The Crackdown is Real.

The staking crackdown is just one element of a clear throttling of the crypto economy V1.0 which has been affected by US authorities in the past week alone.

The de facto closure of Paxos in the USA has killed PayPal’s stablecoin ambitions but its impact may be most acutely felt on Binance, who use Paxos for their USD stablecoin token.

Back in the parish world of markets, don’t forget you can catch all our Bitcarnage every day in the Exchange Invest newsletter. That can be in your inbox for only $349 per user per year.

In the parish of exchanges, as they are traditionally created, TMX Group has announced a proposed five-for-one share split of the Canadian market operator.

NYSE is planning to compensate brokerage claims after their recent technology glitch.

The CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges Nicolas Aguzin regarded his visit recently as part of a Hong Kong Government delegation as being a ‘very productive’ trip to the Middle East.

Equally, Hong Kong Exchange’s growing attractiveness as a listing venue for Southeast Asian companies has been highlighted this week by amongst others, various partners in Allen & Overy talking to DealStreetAsia.

The Turkish Stock Exchange had a very torrid week for all of Turkey following the horrific earthquake that ripped apart so many lives in the 10s of 1000s, probably sadly, in the hundreds of 1000s of dead, ultimately, on the border between Turkey and Syria to the southeast of Istanbul.

The Turkish Stock Exchange halted trading all the way until the 15th of February. Delighted to say that as we were recording this podcast, bourse Istanbul was back underway, which was great news.

That was the first exchange shut down in Istanbul in 24 years. The president, of course, had been the 1998 prorogation of the Turkish stock market, after another enormous earthquake in that fault-rich land.

NSE’s Chief Executive Ashishkumar Chauhan is waiting for SEBI’s response in relation to his IPO plans.

While the news isn’t so good for Chitra Ramkrishna, yes, she got bail in the NSE phone type case but at the same time, the NSE’s Indian board of directors has given sanction to the CBI the Indian fraud squad to prosecute Chitra Ramkrishna over various aspects of the troubled co-location case.

Good news from CCP 12 (the global body of clearing houses, they welcomed KASE (Kazakhstan Exchange) as a new observer member. And don’t forget, of course, you were able to catch a great interview that I did just a few weeks ago on IPO-Vid with the CEO of KASE itself Alina Aldambergen.

Results, it was a very busy week for results in the parish. All the details were of course in Exchange Invest Daily, the newsletter no person can afford to be without in capital markets and market structure. For the sake of this podcast let’s look at a couple of edited highlights.

CME (depending on which analyst you listen to) was either as expected or a slight beat to the overall earnings, revenue at $1.2 billion.

Much more impressive numbers from Deutsche Börse, they saw net revenue increase 24%, and EBITDA +24%.

In deals this week, TP ICAP has terminated talks to sell their data unit Parameta.

We’ve mentioned some weeks ago in the Exchange Invest newsletter that TP ICAP seemed to be shopping their data business in recent months, although investor interest had struck me as somewhat slightly lukewarm. The whole affair though is rather weird – but of course, this is the strange world of TP ICAP. Apparently, according to the TP propaganda, Parameta could be worth 1.5 billion pounds but the deal has been pulled apparently, because the TP ICAP share price has recovered to a total market cap for the group of just under 1.4 billion pounds, as always with TP ICAP #ItsConfusing.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Black Knight is going to sell its mortgage loan origination tech business. As ICE’s CEO Jeffrey Sprecher was reiterating in the ICE quarterly conference call on February 2nd, that he expected the acquisition to close in the first half of this year, but he wasn’t commenting further as ICE continues to work with the FTC.

Bad news from the Xavier Rolet led SPAC World Quantum Growth Acquisition Corp., but it was entirely expected if you’re a reader and subscriber to Exchange Invest News Daily. WQGAC has announced that they are ultimately looking towards liquidating the company on delisting due to their failure to find a SPAC transaction within the prerequisite time period.

Bombay Stock Exchange Group (BSE) is going to be divesting a 2.5% stake in CDSL when that goes public through the OFS route.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for some reading, coming up to half term and indeed Easter, don’t forget to pick up a copy of my most recent book “Victory or Death?” Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and the FinTech World. That book is published by DV Books and distributed by Ingram worldwide.

While you’re waiting for your copy of “Victory or Death” to arrive from the good folks of Amazon or other great vendors from around the globe, don’t forget to check out our livestream Tuesday 6pm London, 1 o’clock New York time – it’s the IPO- Vid live show. Catch the back episodes on LinkedIn and YouTube via “IPO-Vid”.

Just recently, we had a magnificent show IPO-Vid #94 STRATE to the Blockchain with the woman who effectively revolutionized the settlement and digitized it of all stock and bond transactions in South Africa Monica Singer, and has now moved to much more exciting distributed ledger fields.

Coming up this Tuesday, Tim Worstall expert in many, many aspects of the mineral business and energy overall as well as multiple other commodities. He’s going to be discussing with me: What Have We Got In Reserve? You can catch that on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube coming this Tuesday at 7PM CET.

Product news this week, CBOE Europe derivatives is expanding into Pan-European single stock options.

CEDX is initially planning to offer equity options to companies from 10 European countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.

Saudi Exchange planning to launch single stock options in Q2 2023 according to the CEO.

Other good news from the resurgent Saudi Tadawul bourse this year. The head of the capital market authority, the kingdom’s regulator said they had 23 companies waiting to go public. While later in the week the Saudi Exchange CEO himself said he reckons he could have as many as 100 or nearly 100 IPOs this year.

In technology news, Deutsche Börse and Google Cloud have announced a strategic partnership to accelerate innovation. Google Cloud will become Deutsche Börse preferred cloud partner for the next 10 years.

DB1 will accelerate the development of its digital securities platform D7 with Google Cloud’s secure infrastructure and leading data and analytics capabilities.

And thus the great distributed cloud game is upon us, ladies and gentlemen. To the west, CME Google.

As you recall, Google invested $1 billion in exchange giant CME to strike a cloud deal with a whole new separate category of stock about a year or so ago, and later NASDAQ partnered with AWS/Equinix. Most recently, the London Stock Exchange Group and Microsoft have joined forces with Microsoft taking a stake. Its interesting DB1 is not diluting its cap table further with any money from the cloud partner. Perhaps the appetite for M&A is even lower than nothing much beyond what happens within the excellent EEX that we have been seeing in recent times from the Deutsche Börse Group. Despite protestations from the CEO of DB1 this week that he’s talking to many more investment bankers than ever before, during his term in office.

Great news from BMLL is expanding their 15-petabyte lake. They’ve added the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) to their roster of exchange clients intriguing South African debut with JSE in South Africa as BMLL adds another continent.

Ion brought their clients back online after the ransomware attack that hasn’t stopped though the regulatory firmament from worrying and making many great statements about what could be their next major work in progress.

Rethink needed to regulate big tech and finance, for instance, says BIS official just during the course of the last week. Certainly it’s going to be a very big challenge for Andrea Pignataro  and his Ion empire to manage to get the debt-fueled Ion Group really running again and being trusted by the market.

Bakkt killed off their consumer app sunsetting that and focusing on B2B consumer offerings., that’s going to be business-to-business-to-consumer. So, I suppose that’s BBC.

A pity that Bakkt didn’t break into the consumer market directly, but it still appears rather a lost venture in a world of opportunity where its credibility could have underpinned a great success. Instead, since well, Kelly Loeffler was lost to the parish for her political career, Bakkt has essentially floundered.

Finally, this week in technology news, a group of banks are leading a $65 million investment in a crypto-infrastructure firm Taurus.

Regulation news this week, China Daily reports that Chinese authorities are looking at reforms to further facilitate the maturity of the indigenous Chinese capital markets.

While in India stock exchanges are increasing their scrutiny of traders whose exposure exceeds their income. Fascinating move as significant disparities has emerged between the declared income of certain investors and traders and how much they are actually managing to trade in stocks and particularly in derivatives.

Over in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai’s crypto regulator is planning to quadruple headcount in the course of the coming year.

Career path news this week, Roland Chai currently EVP at NASDAQ and a member of its Clearing Board has been appointed to the board of ISSA.

MCX has appointed the ex-NABARD Chief Harsh Kumar Bhanwala as Chairman.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman is stepping down.

Right around the Pacific, where are interesting stirrings in the area of free trade the free trade bloc born in 2018 the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) already includes Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, and Brunei.

Applicants queuing up to join include Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica with the Philippines also taking an interest. There’s also a possible membership application from China although that is proving a little more politically tricky.

However, the most interesting applicant in many ways is more Atlantic and geography but certainly has a huge interest in Asia. The United Kingdom looks to be on a clear track for membership after the Japanese PM was pushing UK accession into CPTPP just the other week when he was on a visit to London.

Anyway, UK membership – even with the Great British economy in some degree of tatters right now, without a G7 member economy as well as bringing the Asian trade bloc to the equivalent of 16% of global GDP. That would make CPTPP equivalent to the US economy and larger than the EU, which could be a shock to the unrelenting remoan/rejoin fraternity of europhiles, myopic europhiles it has to be said in London.

There are some snags to be resolved around agriculture, but nonetheless, the path looks inevitable and it’s beholden on the shambolic UK government to do something, as opposed to the relative stasis which has become the Tory party watchword these past 13 years.

Now, of course, if the UK joined and the US gets over its ongoing isolation (as strongly endorsed by Biden as by the Trumpy one) and they were also to join a process that they effectively began with the TTP… Suddenly 1/3 of world trade enmeshed together would look very, very interesting indeed, in these more trade-fragmented times.

Above all else, Asia has momentum, Europe has fading past glories.

And on that mysterious and magnificent note, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Patrick L. Young.

Thank you for listening to this 181st Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast.

I wish you all a great week in blockchain, life, and markets.

LINKS:

TMX Group Limited Announces A Proposed Five-For-One Share Split
Newswire

NYSE Plans To Compensate Brokerage Claims After Glitch
Reuters

Watch HKEX’s Aguzin: Visit To Middle East ‘Very Productive’
Bloomberg

HKEX’s Growing Attractiveness As A Listing Venue For Southeast Asian Companies
DealStreetAsia

Turkish Stock Exchange Halts Trading After Deep Selloff
CGTN

Awaiting SEBI Response, Says NSE Chief Ashishkumar Chauhan On IPO
Business Standard

Chitra Ramkrishna Gets Bail In NSE Phone Tap Case
Telegraph India

NSE India Board Gives Sanction To CBI To Prosecute Chitra Ramkrishna
Telegraph India

CCP12 Welcomes KASE As A New Observer Member
CCP12 LinkedIn

CME Group Inc. Reports Q4 And Full-Year 2022 Financial Results

CME Group Q4 2022 Earnings Introductory Script
CME

TP ICAP Terminates Talks To Sell Data Unit
Nasdaq

Report: Black Knight Wants To Sell Mortgage Loan Origination Tech Business
Jax Daily Record

World Quantum Growth Acquisition Corp. Announces Adjournment Of Extraordinary General Meeting Of Shareholders And Determination To Liquidate The Company And Delist
Business Wire

BSE To Divest 2.5% Stake In CDSL Through OFS Route
The Economic Times

Cboe Europe Derivatives To Expand Into Pan-European Single Stock Options
PR Newswire

Saudi Exchange Planning To Launch Single Stock Options In Q2 2023: CEO
Arab News

Saudi Bourse Has 23 Companies Waiting To Go Public, Says CMA Head
ZAWYA

Deutsche Börse Group And Google Cloud Announce Strategic Partnership To Accelerate Innovation
DB1

BMLL Adds Johannesburg Stock Exchange To Its Roster Of Exchange Clients
BMLL

ION Brings Clients Back Online After Ransomware Attack
Reuters

Salomon Trader’s Debt-Funded Empire Left Reeling by Russian Hack
Bloomberg

Rethink Needed To Regulate Big Tech In Finance, Says BIS Official

Reuters

Bakkt Kills Off Consumer App
Finextra

Banks Lead $65 Million Investment In Crypto-Infrastructure Firm Taurus
Finextra

Reform To Further Facilitate Maturity Of Capital Market
China Daily

Dubai’s Crypto Regulator Plans To Quadruple Headcount
Bloomberg

Roland Chai Joins ISSA Board
Asset Servicing Times

MCX Appoints Ex-NABARD Chief Harsh Kumar Bhanwala As Chairman
B2BCHIEF

PayPal’s Dan Schulman To Step Down
Finextra