Deals & People October 25, 2011

Merlin Hires Chief Market Strategist

Merlin Securities announced that Rick Bensignor, a former Morgan Stanley strategist and behavioral economist, has joined the firm as Chief Market Strategist.
Reported by

In this new position at Merlin, a technology solutions provider and prime brokerage services firm, Bensignor will produce behavioral market strategy research focused on a wide variety of asset classes and macro-economic commentary that will be made available to Merlin’s existing MerlinPrime, MerlinSHARP, and Merlin Institutional Group (MIG) clients. Bensignor will report directly to Stephan Vermut, Founder and Managing Partner of Merlin Securities, and will be based in the firm’s New York office.   

Bensignor has worked at Morgan Stanley, Dahlman Rose, and Bloomberg, LP. Within Morgan Stanley’s Principal Strategies Group, he was the group’s chief market strategist. Previously, he had been the firm’s Institutional Investor-ranked technical strategy analyst and oversaw its technical research product for four years. Bensignor also served as the head of technical analysis, futures, and commodities at Bloomberg, managing product development, sales, and marketing. Before that, he was Morgan Stanley’s commodities technical strategist and head of its institutional commodity futures sales desk, which followed his 12-year trading career as a broker and independent trader on the floor of several New York futures exchanges.    

Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.

Bensignor received a B.S. in Business Administration from the State University of New York at Albany with honors.

The Markets October 25, 2011

Companies Worldwide Focusing on SWFs and EMs

An investor relations report from BNY Mellon found companies worldwide are continuing to expand outreach to sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and emerging markets (EMs). 
Reported by

The study, “Global Trends in Investor Relations: A Survey Analysis of IR Practices Worldwide,” also found nearly three out of four respondents believe mechanisms such as short-selling, “dark pools,” and high-frequency trading negatively impact global trading markets and that more oversight is necessary. 



Developed as a benchmarking tool for BNY Mellon’s depositary receipt clients, the survey looks at how publicly traded companies are managing their IR practices – from guidance and disclosure policies, to most popular roadshow destinations.  

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

“Companies are adapting to new global market realities and taking a strategic approach to sovereign wealth, as well as growing investor pools from China to India to Brazil, as they seek to better position their firms in higher-growth regions of the world,” said Michael Cole-Fontayn, CEO of BNY Mellon’s Depositary Receipts business.  “We see this trend only strengthening and are developing new products that offer greater visibility and access to the global capital markets for forward-thinking firms.” 



Key findings from the survey include: 
 

  • Fifty-nine percent of all companies meet with sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), up from 47% in 2010, and an additional 25% would consider meeting with them. By a wide margin, the most frequently engaged wealth funds are based in Singapore, Norway, and Abu Dhabi. Western European companies are the most likely to meet (69%) or consider meeting (24%) with SWFs, while North American firms are least likely to engage sovereign wealth funds (42%). 


  • Forty percent of companies are actively targeting investors in emerging markets, up from 36% last year. Nearly one-in-five are considering a secondary listing outside their home market. Among these firms, a listing in Hong Kong or China is of strongest interest, followed by Brazil and India. Latin America- (70%) and Asia-Pacific-based (54%) companies report the highest interest in attracting emerging market investors.
  • Seventy-four percent of all firms believe additional regulatory oversight is needed for trading mechanisms such as “dark pools,” short-selling and high-frequency trading. The sentiment is strongest among U.S. companies (89%) versus non-U.S. firms (70%).
  • Sixty-five percent of firms issue corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, up from 50% a year ago. Nearly twice as many firms in North America (54%) and Asia-Pacific (61%) now do CSR reporting compared to 2010, more in line with companies in Western Europe (84%) and Latin America (68%).
  • Ninety-two percent of all companies meet with hedge funds, largely unchanged from 2010; 21% of a firm’s investor meetings are with hedge funds, down from 24% a year ago.
  • Eighty-five percent of companies provide financial guidance, especially those in Western Europe (89%) and North America (92%). Seventy-one percent of firms in the BRIC countries offer such guidance, compared to 89% of companies in non-BRIC emerging markets.
  • Twenty percent of companies use social media tools to communicate with investors, up from 9% in 2010, but the majority of IR departments remain wary about tools like Twitter and Facebook.
The complete report can be downloaded at http://www.adrbnymellon.com/IRSurvey.jsp.  

«