EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 11 May 2010

The SEC, major US exchanges such as NYSE, NASDAQ, BATS, Direct Edge, ISE and CBOE, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority "agreed on a structural framework, to be refined over the next day, for strengthening circuit breakers and handling erroneous trades."

DB1 reported net income of €157m (-24% y/y), adjusted net income of €177m and EPS of €0.84  (-24% y/y). Sales revenues were €519.2m (-4% y/y) and total cost were €298.8m (+4% y/y) including restructuring expenses of €27.8m (adjusted total cost: €271m; -6% y/y).

DB1: Eurex will launch a new options contract based on the EURO STOXX 50 Dividend Points future.

BM&FBOVESPA launched the hydrous ethanol futures and options contract, which will be settled in cash and will use the Ethanol Hydrated Price Indicator of Paulínia. Trading will start on May 17.

JSE is awaiting regulatory approval to launch the first dark pool in Africa, Block X. The dark pool would operate around the CLOB and not operate separately, according to COO Leanne Parsons. The exchange will also launch on September 8th a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Board which already has the support of Sasol’s scheme.

JSE is planning to launch a platinum ETF and an ETF of African blue chip companies this year.

Bursa Malaysia’s CEO, Yusli Yusoff commented in an interview with Bloomberg TV that Bursa Suq A-Sila objective “is to facilitate short-term liquidity management by Islamic banks and today about 90 percent of Malaysian Islamic banks use our platform for that purpose. Our next objective is to attract major Islamic banks from abroad, especially the Middle East, to start using this platform.”

EEX “demands the introduction of the reverse charge procedure also for the spot market for power and natural gas throughout Europe“ to prevent possible sales tax fraud in trading in power and natural gas said its CFO, Iris Weidinger.

Tokyo Commodity Exchange April ADV increased +21% m/m to 120.6k contracts. OI increased +6% m/m to 314.6k contracts.

LaBranche’s Board of Directors amended the 2010 Equity Incentive Plan and reduced the maximum number of shares that may be delivered to participants under the plan to 2 mn from 4.5 mn.

Liquidnet connected its crossing network to Estonia and Lithuania.

The OCC appointed Craig Abruzzo and Valar Mihan to the Board of Directors. Mr. Abruzzo is currently head of Morgan Stanley's Listed Derivatives business in the Americas and Mr. Mihan is a Managing Director and Head of Americas Equity-Linked Trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The OCC appointed Paul Brody as Vice Chairman. Mr. Brody is CFO of Timber Hill and Interactive Brokers.

Instinet Canada appointed Jeff Houslander and Andrew Hill as Executive Directors, Electronic and Program Sales and Trading, on its Canadian sales and trading desk in Toronto. Mr. Houslander and Mr. Hill were both previously in senior sales and trading positions with ITG Canada.

LSE: the FSA gave status for transaction reporting to UnaVista Approved Reporting Mechanism (ARM).

Exegy and Solace Systems announced an alliance for market data collection and distribution that will allows a single 2U Exegy Total Connect appliance to consume all available market data feeds and simultaneously distribute relevant data to hundreds of client applications through the Solace Message Router.

QuantHouse released a major enhancement to its QuantFEED technology that allows sub-microsecond communication performance between market data normalisation and client trading strategy processes.

Visa and MoneyGram launched a cash-to-Visa card program enabling consumers to transfer money from MoneyGram locations in the US to the Visa accounts of recipients outside of the US.

MasterCard’s Asia, Middle East and Africa president, Vicky Bindra, said the company expects double digits growth in the region and “regulations are going to become more and more open to looking at different forms of payments … We have an opportunity to really go and figure out ways to operate in this world.”

Legg Mason reported 4Q10 EPS of $0.39 (+39% q/q) on revenues of $671.4 mn (-2.8% q/q; +11.9% y/y) and operating expenses of $565.5 mn (-7.5 q/q; -7.7 y/y). AUM increased +0.4% q/q (+7.8% y/y) to $684.5 bn.

Legg Mason will transition certain shared services to investment affiliates and expect cost savings of $130 mn to $150 mn on a run rate basis by 4Q12. The company will incur in restructuring and transition costs of $190 to $210 mn over the next 18 months and expects improvement in adjusted operating margins of 6% to 8% by the end of fiscal year 2012.

BEN AUM increased +2.7% m/m (+39.4% y/y)at the end of April to $602.5 bn.

Henderson AUM increased +4% in 1Q10 to £60.3 bn driven by net inflows of £0.7 bn into higher margin and £0.3 bn into fixed income Institutional business and a £0.6 billion pipeline of client commitments in this channel.

EFG agreed to transfer its stake in Marble Bar Asset Management (MBAM) to MBAM’s senior management, in exchange for a perpetual cash flow stream based of 15% of MBAM’s management fee revenues and 5% of its performance fee revenues. The arrangement will conclude in 3Q10 and requires regulatory approval.

Legg Mason was upgraded to “Neutral” from “Underperform” at Bank of America. Target price was kept at $31 per share.

Fidelity appointed Ronald O’Hanley as president of Asset Management and Corporate Services. Ronald previously served as president and CEO of BNY Asset Management.

EU: The Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee postponed its vote on the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive until May 17.

US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) proposed an amendment to Senator Dodd’s financial regulatory reform bill introduced last Monday that would require all investment pools with at least $100 mn in assets (including hedge funds, venture capital funds and private equity funds) to register with the SEC.

US House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin (D-MI) said lawmakers will seek to raise taxes on carried interest to help finance the financial regulation bill. The bill might be discussed by the House in the next few weeks.

US Senator Carl Levin co-sponsored a bill to ban investment banks from “material conflicts of interest” related to their asset-backed securities operations.

US Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) a member of the Senate Banking Committee, suggested to implementing restrictions on high frequency traders. "I'm not saying what the answer is -- maybe there needs to be speed limits in the system," Warner said.

The Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority (ESCA) which regulates ADSX and DFM is looking into modifying rules that would allow short-selling hedging and derivatives trading in the UAE.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com