Mr. Ramadorai, recently retired as the CEO & MD of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest Technology services companies. Currently Mr Ramadorai is a Non-executive Vice Chairman of TCS and has been associated with the company for the past thirty seven years. Mr. Ramadorai is also represented on the Board of a number of companies and educational institutes — including Tata Industries, Hindustan Unilever Limited, Piramal Healthcare Limited and MIT Sloan School of Management (EMSAEB). In recognition of Mr. Ramadorai’s commitment and dedication to the IT industry he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in January 2006. In April 2009 he was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to the Indo-British economic relations.

His academic credentials include a Bachelors degree in Physics from Delhi University (India), a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Telecommunications from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (India) and a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of California – UCLA (USA). In 1993, Mr. Ramadorai attended the Sloan School of Management’s Senior Executive Development Program.
“It is a great privilege to chair the board of one of India’s important financial institutions at a time of change and innovation,” said Mr. Ramadorai. “Moving forward, our market is positioned to extend its leadership on a broad range of fronts, including protecting investor interests, raising the bar on self regulation and governance, and ensuring the highest quality market for our customers.My colleagues on the board of directors and the management team will continue to ensure the success of the BSE and its continued role at the center of India’s capital market development.”

“On behalf of the entire BSE community, I want to congratulate and welcome Mr Ramadorai on his election as Chairman,” said Mr. Madhu Kannan, MD & CEO, BSE. “Mr. Ramadorai brings a great deal of experience and insight into this role, and we will continue to work with him during a truly exciting and important period for the BSE and our nation’s financial markets. We also want to record our thanks and appreciation to Mr. Jagdish Capoor for his tenure as chairman. He has made a positive and lasting difference at the BSE and for Indian capital markets as a whole.”

Mr. In-soo Kim said: “Our agreement with Eurex today is part of our strategy to extend the global reach of KRX markets and furthermore, it is in line with KRX’s vision of becoming a world-class premier exchange. Through this cooperation, we will provide round-the-clock trading opportunities in the KOSPI 200 Options market, which is already the most liquid exchange-traded derivative product in the world.”

Michael Peters said: “This cooperation is another major milestone in our strategy to extend our global product suite by offering our members access to existing liquidity pools. The listing at Eurex of the most heavily traded options contract in the world will enable international investors and traders to access the KOSPI 200 Options market during core European trading hours.”

Both partners believe that the cooperation will increase the liquidity and efficiency of the Korean market. This newly extended market for KOSPI 200 Options will provide existing market participants trading and hedging opportunities for KRX positions after Korean trading hours and the potential to take positions as the global market fluctuates.

Dr. Cheng Xiao, the General Manager of GF Futures, said ”We are honored to be the first Chinese broker as a member of Eurex. We will have a better understanding of the European market together with our customers. Being a member of Eurex represents another major step to offer access to international business opportunities to our customers as well as a further commitment to the internationalization of GF Group.“

“We are very pleased to welcome the first Chinese broker as a member of Eurex”, said Michael Peters, member of the Eurex Executive Board. “Through their connection to Eurex, GF Futures (Hong Kong) is the first Chinese broker to give its customer base direct and reliable access to our international trading network out of Hong Kong. Over the last two years we have seen a fast growing interest from Asian clients demanding direct access to our products.”

Eurex is strongly committed to further expanding its business in the Asia-Pacific region. Representative offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo were opened last year. Currently there are 10 members admitted out of Asia-Pacific, and several firms are in the admission process. The volume generated by the Asian members has tripled in 2009 compared with 2008.

GF Futures (Hong Kong) Co. Ltd is a subsidiary company fully owned by GF Futures Co., Ltd. Its establishment was approved by China Securities Regulatory Commission as one of the first three Futures Commission Merchants (FCMS) to launch business in the Hong Kong market.

The remodeled Clearing Fund is designed to be scalable, catering to market growth and development. The changes also reinforce the robustness of the Clearing System.

The new structure more closely links members’ clearing contributions to the volume of risks they bring to the clearing house. Clearing members’ security deposits will begin at a minimum amount of US$500,000. The previous cap on further assessments of S$8 million per member is now revised to a maximum of three times the member’s security deposit.

The revised SGX-DC Clearing Rules will be available on the SGX website on 10 May 2010.

Subject to regulatory approval, the targeted launch date for the U.S. dollar denominated futures and options on futures contracts will be in the second half of 2010.

The EURO STOXX 50 Index is Europe’s most successful equity index. It is weighted by float-adjusted market capitalization, and each component’s weight is capped at 10% of the index’s total free-float market capitalization. The EURO STOXX 50 Index represents 50 supersector leaders in the 12 Euro zone countries Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. It captures approximately 60% of the free-float market capitalization of the EURO STOXX TMI Index, and is widely used as an underlying index for financial products globally.

Mr Chew Sutat, Executive Vice President and Head of Market Development at SGX said, “SGX EURO STOXX 50® Index futures and options on futures contracts will provide our market participants with European exposures to manage their risks during the Asian timezone. The listing of this global contract alongside our suite of Asian products provides customers a one-stop access into Asian and European equity markets, and facilitates cross-product arbitrage on different markets.”

“The EURO STOXX 50 Index is not only the leading pan-European index, but also holds the number three position in terms of trading volumes in the global derivatives market as underlying for futures and options contracts,” said Hartmut Graf, chief executive officer, STOXX Limited. “STOXX’s goal is to expand its European success story globally, and licensing our flagship index to the Singapore Exchange is a step on this way.”

This follows SGX’s obtaining of licensing rights from India Index Services & Products Limited (IISL) for the product range including derivative contracts on the CNX Nifty Junior, CNX 100 and CNX Midcap indices. The addition of these products is subject to relevant regulatory approvals. The development comes amid a sharp increase in the trading of India-related products on SGX and elsewhere as the country’s economy continues to be one of the fastest-growing in the world.

Building on the success of SGX’s current offerings, these new India-based products will provide market participants with increased trading opportunities and enhanced means for risk management. Since its launch in 2000, the SGX S&P CNX Nifty Futures has grown to be one of SGX’s key Asian equity derivatives products. Total trading volume in 2009 was 7.1 million contracts, representing a daily average of 29,524 contracts. A new daily record of 297,280 contracts was achieved on 27 January 2010 on the back of an active onshore market and rollover activity.
SGX also lists four exchange-traded funds (ETFs) linked to Indian equity indices on the securities market, namely the db x-trackers S&P CNX Nifty ETF, iShares MSCI India ETF, Lyxor India S&P CNX Nifty ETF and Lyxor MSCI India ETF with combined assets under management of US$782 million as at end-2009. In 2009, total trading value of Indian-based ETFs on SGX surged 48% to S$2.6 billion, underscoring strong investor appetite for Indian assets.

Mr Magnus Bocker, CEO of SGX, said, “We would like to express our appreciation to our customers for their support of our current suite of India-linked products. As we continue to find ways to meet customers’ growing interest in the Indian market through our different partnerships, we are very excited to deepen our relationship with IISL with this planned expansion of our suite of Indian equity derivatives. This will complement our current offerings and bolster SGX’s position as a one-stop gateway for international market participants to manage their Indian investment, trading and hedging needs.”

Mr Ravi Narain, Chairman of the Board of Directors of IISL and Managing Director & CEO of the National Stock Exchange of India Limited, said, “SGX has achieved a solid track record with Nifty futures contract. We are pleased to see SGX’s interest in expanding the range of products based on the Nifty family of indices. This is testament to the international brand recognition of the Nifty index. Today, the Nifty is used extensively by investors in India and around the world to take exposure to the Indian equities market. The total trading volume of Nifty-linked Futures on NSE in 2009 was 167 million contracts, representing a daily average of 687,000 contracts and the trading volume of Nifty-linked Options on NSE in 2009 was 321 million contracts representing a daily average of 1,321,000 contracts Index derivatives based on Nifty have been very successful both in India and in Singapore over the last few years. Further, ETFs and structured products on Nifty have been successfully introduced in US, European and Asian markets by leading ETF providers and investment banks. Nifty has become the true benchmark of the Indian capital market.”

SunGard’s Global One is a suite of application modules that create an integrated solution to help meet the needs of international securities financing, covering principle and agency trading and settlement. Global One integrates with BOCI’s technical architecture, which helped accelerate time to market. In addition to using Global One to manage its core lending program, BOCI uses the solution’s Global View reporting tool to produce a suite of tailored reports for BOCI clients.

Craig Costigan, executive vice president and general manager, securities finance for SunGard’s capital markets and investment banking business, said, “We are pleased to be a component of BOCI’s business growth in securities lending. BOCI’s implementation of Global One demonstrates that SunGard’s solutions and business experience are able to help customers successfully launch and grow their securities lending programs.”

If we look at the second scenario where the name sold down 62% there was clearly a problem with pre-trade risk being poorly instituted despite the erroneous price entered by the trader. Where should the blame lie? With Citi or the Exchange? Apparently, the trader received 2 system warnings before pushing the order through but if the ASX likes to keep markets orderly and fair you would think that the exchange would have rejected this order all together. Some exchanges will only let you enter orders within a certain number of spreads of the last price or they are rejected. Also, the ASX doesn’t have any circuit breaker limits where prices moving above or below a certain percent will cause a trading halt. Of course it’s the members responsibility to ensure that orders don’t cause these kinds of scenarios to take place.

Some exchanges (and the ASX is one of them) don’t allow market orders designed to prevent adverse price movements in securities so, instead, clients will place aggressive limit orders to make sure they complete the trade. While this was not the case with the futures order there was nothing that Citi could have been done to prevent this trading error from happening save the correct price being entered to begin with. However, 250 lots is quite a large order though (AUD 230 million notional and ~4% ADV) so a “fat finger” limit at either the firm level or at the trader level could (should) have been put in place to reduce the number of contracts per trade. The cost of the trade was AUD1 million but would have been much less with a fat finger limit.

Pre-trade risk is very important indeed and should be seriously and vigorously instituted at every firm otherwise it could cost the firm fines, credibility and the cost to back out errors.

Bursa Malaysia Derivatives will offer white labeled versions of Patsystems J-Trader and Pro-Mark front-ends as options to the trading community who wish to access Bursa Malaysia Derivatives products. Both front-ends are flexible, user-friendly and can be easily deployed over the internet, making the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives market more accessible to the global marketplace.

The OMS will provide Bursa Malaysia Derivatives with high speed order routing, straight through processing and sophisticated pre-trade risk management.

Barry White, Regional Director Asia Pacific, Patsystems, said:
“We are extremely excited to have been selected as the front-end provider for Bursa Malaysia Derivatives’ electronic trading platform. Patsystems has successfully provided technology services to members of Bursa Malaysia Derivatives, which has resulted in greater volume for the exchange. We look forward to expanding this partnership and working closely with the exchange as their technology evolves to further increase the liquidity and accessibility of their market.”

Chong Kim Seng, Chief Executive Officer of Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Berhad, a subsidiary of Bursa Malaysia Berhad said:
“Patsystems was selected by Bursa Malaysia after an extensive formal bidding process. The exchange ultimately chose Patsystems because of the accessibility and flexibility of their front-end technology which is an essential requirement for supporting our future growth plans.”

With ‘Live streaming quotes for SENSEX companies’ one can view on a real-time basis, best bid and ask quotes and stock price movements for each of the scrips in the SENSEX, which is India’s benchmark stock Index. ‘BSE SENSEX MOBILE STREAMER’ allow investors to access streaming SENSEX data at their fingertips. The second-by-second movement updates on stocks will help the investors make critically timed trades. The ‘BSE SENSEX MOBILE STREAMER’ can be accessed at http://www.bseindia.com/sensexstreamer.jad. The software is easily downloadable on GPRS activated SIM Cards and Java enabled handsets.

Madhu Kannan, MD & CEO, BSE, said, “Having access to real-time quotes is imperative for investors who wants to take informed decisions for their investments in the Capital Market. BSE is proactively making available the critical information to the investors’ on their mobile phones free of cost. We look forward to adding more features and functionality improvements over the coming months.”