Virginia-based Securities Litigation and Consulting Group (SLCG) has issued a report titled “Are Structured Products Suitable for Retail Investors?” The simple answer is ‘no’, according to the 18 page document. The economics consulting firm won’t win the ‘most inventive report title of year’ prize. And it certainly won’t win any awards for thought provoking or unbiased research.

Last month Structured Products magazine revealed in its article ‘Say hello to Alex’ that the Swiss Exchange and Deutsche Börse would be aggregating their structured products trading in a joint exchange dubbed Alex. Sadly – for now at least – nobody will be greeting Alex, as the new bourse is currently in a trademark dispute over the use of the name.

DWS, Deutsche Bank's asset management arm, has leased the equity derivatives platform of French investment bank SG CIB. The move is being viewed by many as a blow to Deutsche's equity derivatives business, and a boost for proponents of open architecture. DWS is the largest fund manager in Germany.

As editor of Structured Products I'm more than happy to answer people's questions about market developments (and more than happy to ask these questions to you, the market participants). When asked about the size of various markets I usually point people in the direction of reports from some of the major structuring institutions. Now, however, I'm pleased to say that Structured Products has published it's own market data for the European markets.

Structured Products started life as a monthly print magazine in October 2004. Last year we launched our online news service, Structured Products Extra, and now we have launched two new services: our blog, Structured Notes, and our webcast section. Our print magazine is still very much alive and well and our updated online services cement our position as the world's leading information source for structured products professionals.

Who could resist playing a capital-guaranteed lottery? Ferdinando Samaria, global co-head of markets at UBM, the Italian investment bank, floated just such an idea during his keynote address to our recent Structured Products Europe conference in London.

Canadian regulators are worried that hedge fund-linked principal protected notes (PPNs) are being sold to investors who do not fully understand the associated risks. We guessed as much back in September when we published a feature on the subject in the magazine (click here to read the article). The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) – an umbrella organisation for Canada's provincial securities regulators – says it will continue to investigate, but I have to admit I’m confused.

Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) has issued a statement claiming it will “shortly launch the world’s first sharia, legal and financial consultancy firm to provide, as a one-stop centre, for the solution of all financial structuring, legal documentation and product development needs of the Islamic finance industry.” I am, however, aware of at least one other institution already providing such services.

The US is in danger of losing its place as the world's leading financial center in the next decade without legal and regulatory changes, according to a report commissioned by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and US Senator Charles Schumer. Encouragingly for these types of reports the analysis also stretched to covering structured products rather than the derivatives market in general. The report can be accessed here.

Us hacks rarely receive an interesting email from PR firms. West LB has bucked the trend, however. Its latest email to me, courtesy of its outsourced PR people, shows research conducted by its UK structured products team. It revealed that of the 632 products released in the UK last year only five were income paying products.

In the past week Structured Products Extra, our daily online news service, has reported that the Dutch regulator and Canadian regulators have concerns regarding the marketing of derivatives-based investments. Their concerns may or may not be warranted, but the worries have not, to my knowledge, made it as far as their respective parliaments. In Singapore it’s a different story.

“Nothing is simple in the world of structured products.” That’s according to Tony Levene – a journalist on UK newspaper The Guardian at least. On Saturday 27th January the self styled ‘consumer champion’ explained the finer points of structured products to a disgruntled investor.

I’ve received a number of press releases in the past few weeks alerting me to the online capabilities of certain investment banks. Each announcement claims that its online trading platform provides clients (usually private banks) with a great opportunity to streamline their trading activities. I’m not convinced.