Competition for post-trade derivatives business heating up.
With Dodd-Frank now law, the post-trade piece of the derivatives market is where the action is. Joining other dealer banks, Goldman Sachs has thrown its hat into the ring by announcing on July 27 the launch of its Derivatives Clearing Services (DCS) business. DCS will provide OTC clearing service for interest rates, credit, foreign exchange, equities and commodities.
Goldman Sachs’ offering follows the lead of other banks seeking to build on existing and related services in prime brokerage and futures clearing to assist clients’ derivatives-clearing experience “across products, asset classes and regions.”
If as a result, standardization of OTC derivatives becomes more of a flow business, dealer banks will want to bring in volume with an efficient front-to-back office, STP-trading experience. The advantage will fall to banks that already have superior systems and service reputations in prime brokerage, exchange brokerage or clearing and other forms of trade processing for clients.
“The DCS offering provides our clients with a host of value-added services and multi-product expertise to successfully navigate this dynamically changing environment,” said Michael Dawley, Managing Director and Co-Head of Futures and DCS, at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Dawley will run DCS in conjunction with Jack McCabe, also with the title of Managing Director and Co-Head of Futures and DCS.
Trust your dealer?
The question for customers considering using dealers for these services, especially Goldman Sachs, is the extent to which the post-trading clearing and settlement data cannot drift to the aid of dealers’ other trading activities. There is also the lock-in fear of feeling the need to transact with a certain dealer to benefit from their back-end integration.
Custodial banks have a somewhat higher trust factor both in terms of segmenting the business and interoperability with other market participants, but broker-dealers have shown success with prime brokerage. This is where standards, including FpML, to ensure various dealer clearing services can work interchangeably would offer peace of mind.