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Invesco PowerShares, an investment advisory firm providing exchange traded funds, premiered its PowerShares Global Wind Energy Portfolio ETF last Tuesday on the NASDAQ to offer diversified exposure to investors. “Investors get the instant asset allocation of the index which can now be bought with a single trade, which we believe may minimize the company-specific risks inherent with individual stock investments,” says Ed McRedmond, senior v.p. of portfolio strategy at Invesco in Wheaton, Ill. “Since the underlying index is from the NASDAQ OMX index group, NASDAQ was a logical choice for the listing.”

The prospect of a regulated credit rating agency sector in Europe will move one step closer tomorrow (July 8) when a proposal is due to be submitted by the Commission to Ecofin outlining plans for the agencies’ regulation and oversight.

Find out which institutions have excelled this year in providing high-quality products and services across all areas of commercial and investment banking.

Doug Engmann, head of equities at Newedge, has retired from the firm after his contract expired last week. He joined Fimat, which merged with Société Générale’s brokerage division, three years ago after his options and futures trading firm Preferred Trade was acquired. The firm has not yet replaced the derivatives industry veteran, who pioneered direct market access and smart order routing for options in the 1990s and has been a leader in the options industry for well over a decade.

Erwin De Groot, who formerly headed corporate sales for ABN Amro in North America, has joined BNP Paribas. He will be based in Amsterdam, as head of FX sales Netherlands, reporting to Ivo Mertens, the bank’s head of corporate FX & derivatives in the Benelux. The bank has also hired Spyros Ginosatis to cover Greek corporates. He will report to Stelios Papadopoulos, the bank’s head of fixed income in Athens. Ginosatis has previously worked at Marfin and Calyon.

We’ve all heard the stories of how certain so-called market professionals have been able to book what proved fictitious profits because the bank they worked for had models which were pricing FX options significantly differently to the market. While it is true that opinions make markets, it is astonishing that this nefarious practice is still going on after the NAB debacle.

The Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) annual review contains a detailed analysis of the events in FX that took place in the run up and aftermath of the turmoil that has stalked financial markets since August 2007. As most readers of this column are market participants, there is nothing that new to be found in the review and its value is more as a document of record for future FX watchers.

The sun continues to shine on the CME’s FX product suite. The exchange reports not only a record quarter, but also a best ever month in June. Quarterly turnover averaged a notional $93.8 billion, a 26% increase on the same period in 2007, while an average of 763,700 contracts changed hands each day in June, worth a notional $106 billion. This was an increase of 33% on June 2007.

It’s been described elsewhere as a friendly bit of poaching, but officially it’s a strategic partnership between UniCredit and NewSmith Capital Partners. Once it’s all approved, UniCredit will acquire NewSmith Financial Products (NSFP) and become an investor in NewSmith funds, as well as taking a 5% stake in NewSmith Capital Partners. As part of the deal, T J Lim, NSFP’s chief executive officer, will join the executive committee of UniCredit Markets & Investment Banking and also act as co-head of markets with specific responsibility for fixed income and currency, global credit and sales.

Because of its policy on not commenting on staff, there’s no confirmation that Stephan Coquillaud has quit the French bank, apparently with a junior colleague, where he was employed as an options trader. Market sources are putting two and two together and speculating that they are off to join Dave Hitchins at Tor Dom, although the Canadian bank had also not responded to enquiries at the time of writing. It should be a simple job this, it really should.

Word reaches me that Duffy has joined high frequency trading outfit D Square, which is run by Damian Mitchell, a former colleague of mine from Midland Bank. Naturally, I was surprised that the Welsh faux-soul songstress should be moving across to the world of finance to join the company as its seventh employee, so I called up Damian, who seemed so stunned that I’d heard he refused initially to give me any further details. “Listen shag,” I explained. “It’s like torture. I’ll find out all the deets eventually, but if you make it difficult, I’ll only get pissed off. So save your finger nails, if you get my drift.”

Alternative investment manager Millennium Global Investments has appointed Eelco Fiole as its group chief financial officer. The company has also appointed Marc Clapasson as managing director, product and business relationships based in Geneva. Clapasson, who will be responsible for sales into German-speaking Europe, previously headed the product and business development unit at Prime Capital (Asset Management) AG in Frankfurt.