By John Ferry
The first meeting of the Equity Derivatives Market Forum, attended by operations representatives of 17 banks, took place at the end of March at the offices of UBS in London.
“In the past we used to have regular lock-in meetings in the interbank market, where we would get together and try to close down outstanding open confirms that we had,” says José-Luis DeJesus, UBS’s London-based executive director in charge of global equity derivatives operations. “The focus of these was always transactional but we felt we needed to bring this onto the next level and start looking ahead at what we need to do as a marketplace in order to eliminate some of the inefficiencies we are experiencing, and at how to make things easier in terms of agreeing and delivering confirmations.”
The forum is made up of the main equity derivatives dealers. As well as UBS, banks such as ABN Amro, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are represented. As with other markets, most notably credit derivatives, increasing trading volumes and product complexity have pushed dealers to work together to make trading more efficient. Rising prices on most of the world’s stock markets have led to increased activity in equity derivatives.