ICMA Centre Blog

Emerging market repo news

New bond and repo market segment opened in China China announces retail repo market. On 14 February, the PBOC announced a measure to boost the development of the bond market and increase direct financing by opening the Bank OTC Market. This is an extension to the existing interbank bond market. It is open to a…

CFA Research Challenge 2016

Third year student Dina Ghanma talks about her experience competing alongside other ICMA Centre students in the annual CFA Research Challenge. This year, and for the first time, the ICMA Centre proudly participated in the CFA Institute Research Challenge, a global equity valuation competition involving 70 countries and over 4,000 students worldwide. [1] In 2013, our…

Scary stories from the FT — but is it the story that is scary or the holes in the story?

Financial journalists have a difficult job. This is particularly true when they are commenting on markets. These are complex, subtle and dynamic systems which journalists have to observe from the outside. Their problems are usually compounded by lack any direct experience of markets and a paucity of professional or academic literature to consult. If journalists…

Powerball: Did the US accidentally run the world’s largest ever Behavioural Finance experiment?

by Chris Godfrey, Sessional Lecturer at the ICMA Centre where his many research interests include Behavioural Finance. Last week, the world was seized with the spectacle of long lines of Americans queuing to buy tickets for the Powerball lottery, spurred on by the prospect of winning the largest jackpot in history. The eventual advertised annuity…

Careless talk on Bank Undeground

Last year, the Bank of England took a leaf out of the FRBNY’s book and launched a blog site for its analysts. The site is called Bank Underground. Notwithstanding this attempt to sound a big edgy and an unfortunate tendency towards silly titles (eg “Izzy Whissy let’s get Vizzy”), there’s good stuff here. But there…

Troubles in Chinese Stock Markets – by Xiaoyan Zhou

Xiaoyan Zhou, PhD student at the ICMA Centre, blogs about the recent volatility in Chinese stock markets and the effect of government influence on trading. All over the news it was reported that Chinese stock markets crashed in the first few trading days of the New Year last week following the recent release of weak manufacturing…

A case of too many cooks spoiling the SFTR broth: how the EU messed up the definition of a repo

The about-to-be promulgated EU Securities Financing Transaction Regulation (SFTR) is another in a long line of new financial legislation emanating from Brussels that demonstrates how not to write law. Drafting with one’s head in the sand The whole dysfunctional process would appear to start with officials at the European Commission and policy-makers in the European…

Repo markets in East Africa

Let’s cut to the quick: there are currently no true repo markets in East Africa! In Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, there is an interbank instrument called a ‘horizontal repo’ (as opposed to the ‘vertical repo’, which is an instrument between commercial banks and the central bank in each of those countries). In Burundi, there…

Henley Challenge: Why apply and how to succeed – by previous winner Dina Ghanma

Third-year ICMA Centre student and previous Henley Challenge winner Dina Ghanma gives advice to prospective applicants on how to succeed in this year’s competition. It’s that time of year again, and no, I’m not referring to Christmas; it’s the Henley Challenge season! This time last year, I was contemplating whether enrolling in this competition would be a smart…

A taste of the industry: Networking with the brightest minds in finance

BSc Finance & Investment Banking duo Nick Pilkington and Jack Hardie blog about being two of a handful of first-year undergraduates to be selected to network at the LSE Finance Conference amongst other final-year and postgraduate students across the country. The inaugural LSE Finance Conference hosted at the Rosewood Hotel brought together high profile industry…