High-Speed Trader Virtu Discloses $6.9 Million Hacking Loss Aug 12, 2020
Richard Schaeffer Remembrances by Former Colleagues By John Lothian et al.
JLN asked some former colleagues of Richard Schaeffer’s to share some remembrances of him.We have collected ones from CME Executive Chairman & CEO Terry Duffy, former NYMEX CEO Jim Newsome and former NYMEX CIO Sam Gaer so far.Here are their comments:
From the CME Group: “Richie Schaeffer was passionate about everything he did.As a longstanding member, director and Chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), he helped expand the exchange into the global leader in energy risk management.He was also instrumental in facilitating the acquisition that allowed that business to become part of CME Group.Richie will be missed, and we extend our condolences to his family.” Terry Duffy, CME Group Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
To read the rest of these remembrances, go here.
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Hits & Takes By John Lothian & JLN Staff
The FIA has published a risk disclosure template for negative contract prices or account opening documents for futures trading.This is something I noticed was missing when oil prices went negative.
Thank you to the FIA Law and Compliance Division for putting this together.
There are still about 7,000 people in my city who have no power.
The two main power lines into Elmhurst were damaged in the storms on Monday.We are lucky to have power, but my internet is still a little sketchy.
On Monday and Tuesday, I will be on the road to take my son Robby back to school at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
All of his classes are now online, but he had signed a lease and needs to get away from home after a little too much unplanned togetherness after school moved online last spring.Learning online for him comes naturally, as he uses Youtube extensively to research about technology and its uses.He has really impressed me with this knowledge as he helped me outfit my office to be more of a studio to record video and audio.
College football is on the brink, according to Bloomberg, as the Big 10 and the Pac-12 have postponed their fall football schedules.
Today would be a good day for the CFTC Commissioners to agree to drop the charges against Jitesh Thakkar and his firm.Yes, it would be a good day for all.
Have a great day and stay safe and treat people the same way you want to be treated: with respect, equality and justice.~ JJL
Morning Brew’s Business Casual did an interview with Nasdaq President and CEO Adena Friedman which was published as a podcast on Tuesday.Kinsey Grant spoke with Friedman about a number of topics, including market access, investor education and the role of corporations.
It is titled “How to solve capitalism? Public market access, education, & the economy.” You can listen to it here.
~ SR
Bloomberg has a useful Guide to the World’s New Benchmarks After Libor in the U.S., EU, UK and other countries.~ SR
The OCC cleared 30,119,472 contracts yesterday, 6 percent more than its YTD average.~ MR
FIA published this interview with Petal Walker, special counsel at the international law firm WilmerHale, about the mentors that helped her become a top derivatives lawyer and the “unspoken, and often unknown, assumptions” keeping people of color from growing into leadership roles in the financial services industry.~ MR
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JohnLothianNews.com
A lot is going on at Eventus, a financial compliance and trade surveillance software firm based in Austin, Texas.JLN spoke with Eventus CEO Travis Schwab for a look at the market for such technology in exchange traded products, including fixed income, FX and digital assets.
He also discussed competition, regulation, and Eventus’ expansion into Europe and Asia.
Wearing a neck gaiter may be worse than no mask at all, researchers find Allyson Chiu – Washington Post (The Washington Post is providing this important information about the coronavirus for free.) As the number of novel coronavirus cases continues to rise nationwide, the recurring message from many public health experts and doctors has been simple: Wearing masks saves lives.“We are not defenseless against covid-19,” Robert R.Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in July.
“Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus – particularly when used universally within a community setting.”
****Worse than nothing is pretty bad.~ SR
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‘This Is All Beyond Stupid.’ Experts Worry About Russia’s Rushed Vaccine; Vaccines are among the safest medical products in the world — but only because of the intense rigor of the clinical trials that test their safety and effectiveness.Carl Zimmer – NY Times When Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday that Russia had approved a coronavirus vaccine — with no evidence from large-scale clinical trials — vaccine experts were worried.“I think it’s really scary.It’s really risky,” said Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University.
The story of the quick and the dead.~ JJL
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Buzzkill: Mississippi rejects state flag featuring giant mosquito The Guardian Mississippi will not put a huge mosquito on its new state flag.
The state department of archives and history (MDAH) said on Tuesday that a design featuring the blood-sucking insect had slipped through the screening process and should not have been among the selections posted online on Monday.
Consider that idea squashed.~ MR
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Tuesday’s Top Three Our top story Tuesday was Interactive Brokers to pay $11.5 million settlement for suspicious activity reporting failures , from The Trade.Second was the picture of the last Nymex board meeting with the late Richard Schaeffer in the front center.Third was again the obituary for Mr.Schaeffer from Dignity Memorial.
++++ CryptoMarketsWiki , our archive of the cryptocurrency and blockchain world, is going strong and keeping pace as this area of finance grows and evolves.Recently Updated Pages
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High-Speed Trader Virtu Discloses $6.9 Million Hacking Loss; The company detailed the breach in a lawsuit against its insurer seeking coverage of the loss Alexander Osipovich – WSJ Virtu Financial Inc.said it lost $6.9 million to hackers who seized control of the email account of one of its executives and used fake emails to send two fraudulent wire transfers to bank accounts in China.
Virtu, one of the world’s largest high-speed trading firms, disclosed the May breach in a lawsuit filed Monday against Axis Insurance Co., in an effort to get the insurer to cover the loss.
Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands — And No One Is Tracking the Carnage Madeleine Ngo – Bloomberg They simply close down and never show up in bankruptcy tallies; More than half of owners are worried their firm won’t survive Big companies are going bankrupt at a record pace, but that’s only part of the carnage.By some accounts, small businesses are disappearing by the thousands amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and the drag on the economy from these failures could be huge.This wave of silent failures goes uncounted in part because real-time data on small business is notoriously scarce, and because owners of small firms often have no debt, and thus no need for bankruptcy court.
Robinhood to Add Hundreds of Representatives After Trading Surge Sophie Alexander – Bloomberg Robinhood Financial, the online brokerage that has attracted millions of novice investors since the pandemic began, said it plans to hire hundreds of registered representatives this year for new offices in Texas and Arizona.“We’ve more than doubled our support team since January and we’ll continue to grow our teams to provide timely, helpful responses to our customers,” Alex Mesa, Robinhood’s head of customer experience, said Tuesday in a blog post.
BEC Scam Costs Trading Firm Virtu Financial $6.9 Million; Company Sues Its Insurer for Failure to Pay for Damages Doug Olenick – Bank Info Security High-speed trading firm Virtu Financial says it lost $6.9 million in a business email compromise scam in May.The company is now suing its insurer for failure to cover the loss, according to legal documents filed in the case.
Two U.S.
Agencies Examining Investments Sold by Crowdfunding Site YieldStreet; SEC is investigating firm; FBI is collecting information on some of its practices Dawn Lim and Dave Michaels – WSJ Two U.S.agencies are examining investments sold by YieldStreet Inc., an online platform that pitches itself as giving people the chance to get in on deals usually reserved for the largest investors.The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating YieldStreet and collecting information on some of the firm’s business dealings, people familiar with the matter said.
Fed denies Goldman’s appeal against stress test results Robert Armstrong – Financial Times The Federal Reserve has turned down Goldman Sachs’ request for less onerous treatment after the results of its annual stress test, leaving the bank with the highest capital requirement among its large peers.The Fed on Monday published the final common equity tier 1 (CET1) requirements for the 34 largest US banks.Goldman’s requirement, at 13.7 per cent, was unchanged from the figure indicated after the stress test result was delivered to the bank in June.
Kodak Chief Says Company Supports Federal Decision to Halt Loan Rachael Levy – WSJ The chief executive of Eastman Kodak Co.said the company supports a federal agency’s decision to halt a potential loan to the company, backing the move in Kodak ‘s first earnings call since the potential deal was announced about two weeks ago.Kodak CEO Jim Continenza said on Tuesday the preliminary deal with the government requires more work.
He also said Kodak was a solid pick for the potential deal because of the company’s history in chemicals manufacturing and “vast infrastructure,” among other attributes.
ABN Amro Exit Threatens Commodity-Trader Liquidity Squeeze Andy Hoffman and Ruben Munsterman – Bloomberg Options for trade finance are waning as another bank retreats; ABN Amro’s loans to wind down in next three to four years: CFO ABN Amro Bank NV became the latest bank to exit the commodity and trade finance business, further shrinking the pool of funds available to trading houses moving trillions of dollars of oil, metals and grains around the world every year.The Amsterdam-based lender, once a key pillar of a triumvirate of Dutch banks providing short-term loans to traders, said Wednesday it’ll close the division after racking up losses from a series of trading scandals.
Following similar retreats by one-time stalwarts BNP Paribas SA and Societe Generale SA, it’s a blow for commodity traders dependent on such credit to fund their operations.
ABN Amro Cuts a Third of Investment Bank After Virus Losses Ruben Munsterman – Bloomberg As many as 800 jobs may go as division winds down businesses; Trade and commodity finance operations to be dropped entirely ABN Amro Bank NV will cut its investment bank by about a third and shut down lending outside of Europe as the Dutch bank tries to turn around business hit hard by the market chaos caused by the coronavirus crisis.ABN Amro will stop providing corporate finance outside Europe and exit trade and commodity financing altogether, the Dutch bank said on Wednesday.As many as 800 jobs could be lost over three to four years as the investment bank pulls back from activities that currently bring in about 45% of client loans.
TradingScreen Enhances Offerings Through Strategic Partnership With Imagine Software; OEMS to further benefit buy-side customers with seamless real-time risk solutions and pre-trade compliance function TradingScreen TradingScreen Inc.(TS), the all-asset class order and execution management system (OEMS), today announced upgrades to its partnership with Imagine Software, which offers real-time portfolio, risk, and compliance management solutions.
Morgan Stanley boss is frequent caller to SEC chairman; James Gorman has had more contacts with regulator than heads of other big Wall Street banks Kadhim Shubber and Laura Noonan – FT When Jay Clayton takes calls from America’s top bankers, more often than not James Gorman of Morgan Stanley is on the line.The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission has had more private contacts with Mr Gorman, the Morgan Stanley chief executive, than the head of any other big Wall Street bank, according to the regulator’s public calendar.
Federal Reserve’s Covid Response Fuels Private-Equity Debt Boom; Private-equity firms are bingeing on junk bonds as central bank moves have supported high-yield debt markets Chris Cumming – WSJ The private-equity industry has been a little-noticed beneficiary of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to combat the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, as central bank support has spurred a surge in junk-bond issuance by buyout firms.
CFTC Sets the Parameters for Which Virtual Currencies are Subject to Full CFTC Jurisdiction by Merit of How They are Bought and Delivered Andrew Schaffer, Timothy Spangler, Audrey Wagne and Nicholas C.D.
Ward via JD Supra The Commodity Futures Trading Commission published in the Federal Register on June 24, 2020 its final interpretive guidance concerning retail commodity transactions involving certain digital assets (2020 Guidance).1 The 2020 Guidance clarifies the CFTC’s views regarding the “actual delivery” exception to Section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) in the context of digital assets that serve as a medium of exchange, colloquially known as “virtual currencies.” The actual delivery determination is important because it delineates the virtual currencies over which the CFTC has full regulatory jurisdiction and those over which the CFTC merely has anti-fraud and market manipulation jurisdiction.
Is Kelly Loeffler a ‘Corporate Liberal’ or ‘Attila the Hun’? Lachlan Markay – Yahoo News Sen.Kelly Loeffler’s (R-GA) business career was supposed to be one of her key political assets when she was appointed to a vacant Senate seat in January.Instead, it’s turned into an albatross that threatens to make her both the wealthiest and the shortest-serving U.S.
Senator of the Trump era.
We all need to stay alert to the ancient art of invoice fraud; Dubious IOUs have played a part in a series of corporate collapses this year Robert Smith – FT We may have just entered the third decade of a new millennium, but 2020 is rapidly becoming a banner year for one of the oldest scams in the book: invoice fraud.
R.J.O’Brien Names Emre Degirmenci Managing Director, EMEA for RJO Limited UK Affiliate R.J.O’Brien & Associates Chicago-based R.J.O’Brien & Associates (RJO), the oldest and largest independent futures brokerage and clearing firm in the United States, announced today that Emre Degirmenci has been named Managing Director, EMEA for its London-based affiliate, R.J.
O’Brien Limited (RJO Limited), effective September 1.
Retail Chains Abandon Manhattan: ‘It’s Unsustainable’ Matthew Haag and Patrick McGeehan – NY Times For years, Bryant Park Grill & Cafe in Midtown Manhattan has been one of the country’s top-grossing restaurants, the star property in Ark Restaurants’ portfolio of 20 restaurants across the United States.But what propelled it to the top has vanished.The tourists are gone, the office towers surrounding it are largely empty and the restaurant’s 1,000-seat dining room is closed.Instead, dinner is cooked and served on its patio, and the scaled-down restaurant brings in about $12,000 a day — an 85 percent plunge in revenue, its chief executive said.
/nyti.ms/2DY9cCA Coronavirus
The World’s Airports Are Catching Covid, Too; After they invested billions of dollars to become retail and leisure hubs, the pandemic has caused a dearth of free-spending travelers.Bruce Einhorn, Angus Whitley – Bloomberg In surveys of the world’s best airports, Singapore’s Changi regularly ranks near the top.A leader among utilitarian transportation hubs that have been transformed into upscale shopping destinations, Changi Airport in 2019 added Jewel, a futuristic play land with 1.5 million square feet of stores and attractions including a rainforest, hedge maze, and the world’s highest indoor waterfall.And the government had planned this year to begin selecting contractors to work on a huge fifth terminal to boost annual capacity 55%, to 140 million passengers.
Infectious Disease Expert Predicts When U.S.Coronavirus Cases Will Again Explode Lee Moran – Yahoo News Infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm on Monday contradicted President Donald Trump’s fanciful claim that the U.S.will soon be in “very good shape” with the coronavirus pandemic, instead predicting “an explosion” in new cases starting next month.
Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN’s Don Lemon that the U.S.is “just really beginning to get to the really large part of the problem” with an average of 45,000 to 50,000 new confirmed cases of the virus per day.
Russia Defends First Covid-19 Vaccine as Safe Amid Skepticism Henry Meyer and Ilya Arkhipov – Bloomberg First vaccinations of health workers to start in two weeks; Health minister blames Western jealousy for criticism Russia brushed aside international concerns about the safety of the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine and announced it will start mass inoculation this month before clinical testing is completed.“Western colleagues, who can sense the competitive advantage of the Russian drug, are trying to express some opinions that are completely unjustified in our view,” Health Minister Mikhail Murashko told a briefing on Wednesday.“This vaccine is a platform that is already well-known and studied,” he said, adding that other countries have developed antidotes under accelerated testing programs.
Coronavirus Tests the Leadership Style of Goldman Sachs’s C.E.O.
Kate Kelly – NY Times David M.Solomon started 2020 on his back foot.
Mr.Solomon had been on the job as chief executive of Goldman Sachs, perhaps Wall Street’s most storied and vilified institution, for just over a year, working to broaden the bank’s offerings by pursuing lines of business that his predecessors had long avoided.
Moderna Inks $1.5 Billion Coronavirus Vaccine Deal With U.S.Jared S.Hopkins – WSJ Moderna Inc.said Tuesday it agreed to provide the U.S.government 100 million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine in exchange for more than $1.5 billion.The drugmaker’s vaccine agreement is the latest with the U.S., which has already secured hundreds of millions of doses from other companies.
New Zealand probes freight as mystery source of virus outbreak; First locally acquired Covid-19 cases in 102 days threaten to hit economy ahead of election Jamie Smyth – FT New Zealand authorities are investigating whether the country’s first locally acquired cases of Covid-19 in more than 100 days were spread by refrigerated freight imported from overseas.
Netherlands and Belgium split over tackling virus hotspots; Authorities in The Hague and Brussels take sharply different approaches to surge in Covid-19 cases Mehreen Khan and Michael Peel – FT The Netherlands and Belgium are battling some of Europe’s sharpest increases in new Covid-19 cases despite taking sharply different strategies that highlight the difficulties governments still face in quelling the virus.
925 Quarantined for Covid.Is This a Successful School Reopening? A suburban Atlanta county opened its schools amid controversy and a growing case count, previewing a difficult national back-to-school season.
Richard Fausset – NY Times CANTON, Ga.— The first letter went out on Aug.4, one day after students in the Cherokee County School District returned to their classrooms for the first time since the eruption of the coronavirus pandemic.“Dear Parents,” wrote Dr.Ashley Kennerly, the principal of Sixes Elementary School.
“I am writing this letter in order to communicate that a student in 2nd grade has tested positive for Covid-19.” /nyti.ms/33OhesN Exchanges, OTC and Clearing
Wall Street bank fees from China listings jump despite political tension; Growth reflects surge in activity even as ties between Washington and Beijing fray Hudson Lockett – FT Wall Street banks have earned hundreds of millions in fees from Chinese groups selling shares in New York and Hong Kong in 2020, illustrating the fee pool that is at stake as Washington threatens to delist these companies from US markets..
