With less than 2 months to go until Crane's Money Fund Symposium will be held in Pittsburgh, June 12-14, we are also starting preparations for our 10th Annual European Money Fund Symposium. The preliminary agenda has been released and registrations are now being taken for this year's European event, which will take place Sept. 19-20 at the Hilton London Tower Bridge in London, England. We provide more details on both shows below, and feel free to contact us for more information. (Note: If you haven't registered yet for the U.S. Money Fund Symposium, you can still do so via www.moneyfundsymposium.com. Note too: For those attending The New England AFP Annual Conference, April 25-26 in Boston, we hope to see some of you at the show!)
Our 2023 European Symposium event in Edinburgh attracted over 160 money fund professionals, sponsors and speakers. Given rising rates and expectations for another round of regulatory changes in Europe, we expect our show in London to once again be the largest gathering of money market professionals outside the U.S. "European Money Fund Symposium offers European, global and "offshore" money market portfolio managers, investors, issuers, dealers and service providers a concentrated and affordable educational experience, and an excellent and informal networking venue," says Crane Data President Peter Crane. "Our mission is to deliver the best possible conference content at an affordable price to money market fund professionals," he adds.
Registration for European Money Fund Symposium is $1,000 USD. EMFS will be held at the Hilton London Tower Bridge. Hotel rooms must be booked before August 14 to receive our discounted rate of E329. Visit www.craneeurosymposium.com to register, and contact us to request the PDF brochure. (Let us know too if you'd like information on speaking or sponsorships.)
The EMFS agenda features sessions conducted by many of the leading authorities on money funds in Europe and worldwide. The Day One Agenda for Crane's European Money Fund Symposium includes: "Welcome to European Money Fund Symposium" with Peter Crane of Crane Data; followed by a "IMMFA Update: The State of MMFs in Europe" with Kim Hochfeld of IMMFA and IMMFA's Veronica Iommi; "Online Trading Portals & Corporate Investors" with Laide Majiyagbe of BNY Mellon; and, "Senior Portfolio Manager Perspectives," featuring Joe McConnell of J.P. Morgan AM, Douglas McPhail of Morgan Stanley I.M., Ketan Shah of Legal & General I.M. and Dan Singer of J.P. Morgan Securities.
The afternoon will consist of: "Sterling & U.K. Money Fund Issues," with Harm Carstens of DWS Investment, Paul Mueller of Invesco and Aman Samra of Abrdn; "Euro, ESG & French Standard Money Funds" with Vanessa Robert of Moody's Investors Service, David Callahan of Lombard Odier I.M. and Marc Fleury of BNP Paribas A.M.; "U.S. Money Fund & European USD Update" with Peter Crane of Crane Data and Deborah Cunningham of Federated Hermes; and lastly, "Ultra-Short Bond Funds & Standard MMFs" with Neil Hutchison of J.P. Morgan Asset Mgmt, Valerio Lupini of Fitch Ratings and Alastair Sewell of Aviva Investors.
The Day Two Agenda includes: "Strategists Speak: Rates, Risks & Hot Topics" with Soniya Sadeesh of Deutsche Bank and Ronald Man of BofA Securities; "Global, Continental & Brussels Overview" with Dennis Gepp of Federated Hermes (UK), Michael Pedroni of ICI Global and Rudolf Siebel of BVI; and, "Money Fund Reforms: Latest US & Possible EU" with Brenden Carroll of Dechert LLP and John Hunt of Sullivan & Worcester LLP.
The afternoon of day 2 will include: "Repo Developments & Platforms in Europe" with Andy Turvey of GLMX and Cassandra Jones of State Street; "Dealer & Issuer Supply Roundtable" with George MacKenzie of Rabobank, Marianne Medora of Groupe BPCE/Natixis, Stewart Cutler of Barclays and Kieran Davis of TD Securities; and, "Chinese Money Funds & Asian Markets" with Michael Mango of S&P Global Ratings and Minyue Wang of Fitch Ratings.
Also, with less than two months to go, Crane Data is making final preparations for our big show, Money Fund Symposium, which is June 12-14 at The Westin Pittsburgh. The agenda is all set and registrations are still being taken.
Money Fund Symposium attracts money fund managers, marketers and servicers, cash investors, money market securities dealers, issuers, and regulators. Visit the Money Fund Symposium website for more information. Registration is $1,000, and discounted hotel reservations are available. We hope you'll join us in Pittsburgh in June or London in September! (E-mail us at info@cranedata.com to request the full brochure.)
Also, mark your calendars for our next Crane's Money Fund University, which will be held in Providence, R.I., Dec. 19-20, 2024. Money Fund University covers the history of money funds, interest rates, regulations (Rule 2a-7), ratings, rankings, money market instruments such as commercial paper, CDs and Treasuries, and portfolio construction and credit analysis. We also include segments on offshore money funds and ultra-short bond funds. Money Fund University's comprehensive program is good for both beginners and experienced professionals looking for a refresher.
Finally, our next Bond Fund Symposium will be held in Newport Beach, Calif., on March 27-28, 2025. (Click here to see last year's agenda.) Bond Fund Symposium is the only conference devoted entirely to bond mutual funds, bringing together bond fund managers, marketers, and professionals with fixed-income issuers, investors and service providers. The majority of the content is aimed at the growing ultra-short and conservative ultra-short bond fund marketplace. Let us know if you'd like more details on any of our events, and we hope to see you in Pittsburgh in June, in London in September, in Providence in December or in Newport Beach next March! Thanks to all of our speakers and sponsors and for your patience and support over the past three rough years!
In other news, Crypto-reporter.com published an article titled, "Archax Increases Tokenised Money Market Fund Offerings." It says, "Archax, the first FCA regulated digital asset exchange, broker and custodian, announced that it is expanding the range of fund shares it offers in tokenised form with the provision of the BlackRock ICS US Treasury money market fund (MMF), in partnership with the HBAR Foundation. This builds on its launch of tokenised access to abrdn's MMFs last year, which Archax has created on both the Hedera and Ethereum blockchains. This additional BlackRock MMF, along with existing offerings, are all available directly on the Archax platform, as well as through connected networks. The first transaction of tokenised shares of the BlackRock MMF, which was also tokenised on Hedera, the open-source, proof-of-stake public ledger, was completed across the Ownera FinP2P digital asset network."
The piece continues, "In the current high interest-rate environment, putting cash, treasury and stablecoin assets to work is more important than ever. MMFs are a useful vehicle as they have the potential to provide institutional stability and yield, due to their underlying investments in short-term debt products, and reduce single bank or stablecoin provider counterparty risk. In addition, through creating a secondary market for the tokenised instruments, Archax can provide investors with the benefit of almost instantaneous transfer of MMF shares throughout the day -- an advantage which can also see the tokens being used for collateral movement instead of just traditional subscriptions/redemptions."
They quote Graham Rodford, CEO and co-founder of Archax, "Money market funds from different asset managers can follow different underlying investment theses -- for example investing in short-term governmental debt issuances or commercial short-term debt issuances. Consequently, it is important to have a range of offerings available to cater to differing client needs. Adding more funds into our portfolio of tokenised shares of MMF offerings expands the flavours we have on offer and so allows us to serve a broader range of potential clients.... As well as MMF product breadth, product distribution is also vitally important.... And so we are pleased to be expanding our partnership with Ownera to further leverage their FinP2P network for distribution of tokenised shares in MMFs and to help facilitate our first $multi-million trade on Hedera too."
The article also quotes Ami Ben David, CEO and co-founder of Ownera, "Using a simple Ownera Buy-Side Router, suitable banks of all sizes, wealth managers, asset managers, broker-dealers, RIAs (registered investment advisors), and exchanges can route transactions to the tokenized MMFs offered by Archax. This is another step towards realising the vision we share with Archax and other partners across the ecosystem, of a global institutional tokenized assets ecosystem with market-wide access, distribution and liquidity."
Finally, they write, "With all the excitement in the marketplace around real-world-asset (RWA) tokenisation, funds are certainly front and centre as a use case. MMFs are particularly prominent too, as these provide benefits to and serve both the Traditional Finance (TradFi) tokenised world as well as the pure crypto space." For more, see these Crane Data News stories: "CoinDesk on Tether Stablecoin; Paxos" (2/5/24), "Forbes: SEC Targets PayPal Stablecoin" (11/13/23), "J.P. Morgan on Stablecoin Shrinkage, Risks; Bloomberg, WSJ and NY Fed" (9/28/23), "CNBC on PayPal, Paxos' Stablecoin" (8/10/23) and "NY Fed on 'Runs on Stablecoins'" (7/19/23).
