Industry WIKI

A securities commission, securities regulator or capital market authority is a government department or agency responsible for financial regulation of securities products within a particular country. Its powers and responsibilities vary greatly from country to country, but generally cover the setting of rules as well as enforcing them for financial intermediaries and stock exchanges.

Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a deceptive practice in the stock or commodities markets that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information. The setups are generally made to result in monetary gain for the deceivers, and generally result in unfair monetary losses for the investors. They are generally violating

In law and finance, a security interest is a legal right that a secured party has over secured assets. Security interests most often arise where a debtor grants an interest over collateral to a creditor to secure the loan, such that the creditor will have enforceable rights in the event of the debtor's default or non-performance.

Sergio Pietro Ermotti (born 11 May 1960) is a Swiss manager and financial services executive. From April 2021 to April 2023, Ermotti was chairman of Swiss Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, succeeding Walter Kielholz. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of UBS Group AG from November 2011 to October 2020 and regained that position in 2023. He is also a board member

Settlement is the "final step in the transfer of ownership involving the physical exchange of securities or payment". After settlement, the obligations of all the parties have been discharged and the transaction is considered complete.

The shadow rate is an interest rate in some financial models. It is used to measure the economy when nominal interest rates come close to the zero lower bound. It was created by Fischer Black in his final paper, "Interest Rates as Options".

The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE; Chinese: 上海期货交易所) is a futures exchange in Shanghai, China formed from the amalgamation of the national level futures exchanges of China, the Shanghai Metal Exchange, Shanghai Foodstuffs Commodity Exchange, and the Shanghai Commodity Exchange in December 1999. It is a non-profit-seeking incorporated body under the China Securities Regulatory Commissio

In finance, being short in an asset means investing in such a way that the investor will profit if the market value of the asset falls. This is the opposite of the more common long position, where the investor will profit if the market value of the asset rises. An investor that sells an asset short is, as to that asset, a short seller.

Single-price auctions are a pricing method in securities auctions that give all purchasers of an issue the same purchase price. They can be perceived as modified Dutch auctions. This method has been used since 1992 when it debuted as an experiment of the U.S. Treasury for all auctions of 2-year and 5-year notes. There is only one main difference between the multiple-price system and the

In accounting, a slush fund is a monetary fund or account used for miscellaneous income and expenses, particularly when these are corrupt or illegal. Such funds may be kept hidden and maintained separately from money that is used for legitimate purposes. Slush funds may be employed by government or corporate officials in efforts to pay influential people discreetly in return for preferen

A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need for trusted intermediators, arbitration costs, and fraud losses, as well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions.

Social trading is a form of investing that allows investors to observe the trading behavior of their peers and expert traders. The primary objective is to follow their investment strategies using copy trading or mirror trading. Social trading requires little or no knowledge about financial markets.

Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) is a secured overnight interest rate. SOFR is a reference rate (that is, a rate used by parties in commercial contracts that is outside their direct control) established as an alternative to LIBOR. LIBOR had been published in a number of currencies and underpins financial contracts all over the world. Deeming it prone to manipulation, UK regulators

Solana is a public blockchain platform that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and provides smart contract functionality. The platform's native cryptocurrency is SOL. Solana was founded in 2018 by Toly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, and the network was launched in March 2020 by their San Francisco-based company, Solana Labs.

The South Sea Company was a British joint-stock company founded in January 1711, created as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of the national debt. To generate income, in 1713 the company was granted a monopoly (the Asiento de Negros) to supply enslaved Africans to the islands in the "South Seas" and South America. When the company was created, Britain was i

Sovereign funds of China are mechanisms through which the Chinese state acts as a market participant with the goals of supporting key domestic economic sectors, advancing strategic interests internationally, and diversifying its foreign exchange reserves.

Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome.

A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that aims to maintain a stable value relative to a specified asset, a pool or basket of assets. The specified asset might refer to fiat currency, commodity, or other cryptocurrencies. Despite the name, stablecoins are not necessarily stable. Stablecoins rely on stabilization tools such as reserve assets or algorithms that match supply and demand

Stellar, or Stellar Lumens (symbol: XLM), is a cryptocurrency protocol which allows transactions between any pair of currencies.

A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for the issue and redemption of such securities and instruments and capital events including the payment of income and dividends. Securities traded on a stock

A stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets when market participants drive stock prices above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation.

In finance, the strike price (or exercise price) of an option is a fixed price at which the owner of the option can buy (in the case of a call), or sell (in the case of a put), the underlying security or commodity. The strike price may be set by reference to the spot price, which is the market price of the underlying security or commodity on the day an option is taken out. Alternatively,

Subhash Chandra–LIC Housing Finance loan fraud case is a major financial scandal in India involving the diversion of bank loans and money laundering by Subhash Chandra, the promoter of Essel Group.

Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government surveillance, although the two can be mutually reinforcing. The concept of surveillance capitalism, as described by Shoshana Zuboff, is driven by a profit-making incentive, and arose as advert

Sustainalytics is a company that rates the sustainability of listed companies based on their environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) performance. The company was born of a merger between Toronto-based Jantzi Research, which was founded in 1992 by Sustainalytics' current CEO Michael Jantzi, and its European counterpart. Following its acquisition of GES International on Januar

A syndicated loan is one that is provided by a group of lenders and is structured, arranged, and administered by one or several commercial banks or investment banks known as lead arrangers.

Terra is a blockchain protocol and payment platform used for algorithmic stablecoins. The project was created in 2018 by Terraform Labs, a startup co-founded by Do Kwon and Daniel Shin. It is best known for its Terra algorithmic stablecoin and the associated LUNA reserve asset cryptocurrency.

Tether is a stablecoin—a digital currency whose value aims to maintain a stable value relative to the United States dollar—launched by Tether Limited in 2014. It is represented by its currency codes USD₮ and USDT.

Tether Limited is a financial technology company that issues the Tether stablecoin (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization. Founded in 2014, Tether pioneered the concept of fiat-backed digital currencies pegged 1:1 to traditional currencies (initially the U.S. dollar). USDT has become a key source of liquidity in the cryptocurrency market, with over $170 billion i

Tezos is an open-source blockchain that can execute peer-to-peer transactions and serve as a platform for deploying smart contracts. The native cryptocurrency for the Tezos blockchain is the tez (ISO 4217: XTZ; sign: ꜩ). The Tezos network achieves consensus using proof-of-stake. Tezos uses an on-chain governance model that enables the protocol to be amended when upgrade proposals receive

The DAO was a digital decentralized autonomous organization and a form of investor-directed venture capital fund. After launching in April 2016 via a token sale, it became one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in history, but it ceased activity after much of its funds - in the form of US$ exchanged for "Ether-crypto coins" - were taken in a hack in June 2016.

The Laundromat is a 2019 American comedy-drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh with a screenplay by Scott Z. Burns. It is based on the book Secrecy World about the Panama Papers scandal by author Jake Bernstein. The film stars Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Robert Patrick, Jeffrey Wright, David Schwimmer, Matthias Schoenaerts, James Cromwell, and Sharon Stone.

Thematic investing is a form of investment that aims to identify macro-level trends and the underlying investments that stand to benefit from the materialisation of those trends. Thematic investing aims to seize opportunities arising from megatrends likely to shape the global economy in the decades ahead.

Thomas Joseph Barrack Jr. (born April 28, 1947) is an American diplomat, private equity real estate investor and the founder and retired chairman of Colony Capital, a publicly traded real estate investment trust. Following his U.S. Senate confirmation, Barrack has served as United States Ambassador to Turkey since May 2025.

Tom Gores (born Tewfiq Georgious, Arabic: توفيق جورجيوس; Greek: Τεουφίκ Γεωργίου; Hebrew: תאופיק ג'ורג'יוס; July 31, 1964) is an American-Israeli billionaire businessman. He is the founder of Platinum Equity, a private equity firm headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In June 2011, Gores and Platinum Equity became the owners of the National Basketball Association's Detroit Pistons.

"Tone at the top" is a term that originated in the field of accounting and is used to describe an organization's general ethical climate, as established by its board of directors, audit committee, and senior management. Having good tone at the top is believed by business ethics experts to help prevent fraud and other unethical practices. The very same idea is expressed in negative terms

"Too big to fail" (TBTF) is a theory in banking and finance that asserts that certain corporations, particularly financial institutions, are so large and so interconnected with an economy that their failure would be disastrous to the greater economic system, and therefore should be supported by government when they face potential failure. The colloquial term "too big to fail" was popular

Toshiba Corporation (株式会社東芝, Kabushikigaisha Tōshiba; English: ) is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Saiwai-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors, hard disk drives, printers, batteries, lighting, as w

Treasury basis trading is a financial strategy that involves taking offsetting positions in a cash market instrument (typically a U.S. Treasury bond) and its related derivative, such as a Treasury futures contract. The strategy seeks to exploit pricing discrepancies between the two instruments, which are expected to converge over time. It is a specialized form of basis trading applied to

United States of America v. Samuel Bankman-Fried was a 2023 federal criminal trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Financial entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, commonly known as SBF, was convicted on seven charges of fraud and conspiracy following the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November 2022. After the jury's verdict in November

Tron (stylized in all caps) is a decentralized, proof-of-stake blockchain with smart contract functionality. The cryptocurrency native to the blockchain is known as Tronix (TRX). It was founded in March 2014 by Justin Sun and, since 2017, has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a non-profit organization in Singapore, established in the same year. It is open-source softwa

Truck wages are wages paid not in conventional money but instead in the form of payment in kind (i.e. commodities, including goods and/or services); credit with retailers; or a money substitute, such as scrip, chits, vouchers or tokens. Truck wages are a characteristic of a truck system, and are banned by the labour legislation of many countries.

Trust Wallet is a multi‑chain, non‑custodial cryptocurrency wallet that allows users to store, send, receive, and manage digital assets across more than 100 blockchain networks. Available as a mobile app for iOS and Android and as a browser extension, the wallet supports decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, crypto staking, token swapping, and access to decentralized applications (dApps).

The Turkish economic crisis (Turkish: Türkiye ekonomik krizi) is a financial and economic crisis in Turkey. It is characterized by the Turkish lira (TRY) plunging in value, high inflation, rising borrowing costs, and correspondingly rising loan defaults. The crisis was caused by the Turkish economy's excessive current account deficit and large amounts of private foreign-currency denomina

UBS Group AG (stylized simply as UBS) is a Swiss multinational investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland, with headquarters in both Zurich and Basel. It holds a strong foothold in all major financial centres as the largest Swiss banking institution and the world's largest private bank. UBS manages the largest amount of private wealth in the world, coun

Underemployment is the underuse of a worker because their job does not use their skills, offers them too few hours, or leaves the worker idle. It is contrasted with unemployment, where a person lacks a job at all despite wanting one.

Unemployment is the state of not being in paid employment or self-employment but rather currently available for work. Unemployment is measured by the unemployment rate, which is the number of people who are unemployed as a percentage of the labour force (the total number of people employed above a specified age added to those unemployed) during the reference period.

In late 2021, the prices of many essential goods in the United Kingdom began increasing faster than household incomes, resulting in a fall in real incomes. The phenomenon has been termed a cost-of-living crisis. It is due in part to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a global surge in inflation, wage stagnation attributed to the Conservative Party's austerity program

The United Kingdom government austerity programme was a fiscal policy that was adopted for a period in the early 21st century following the era of the Great Recession. Coalition and Conservative governments in office from 2010 to 2019 used the term, and it was applied again by many observers to describe Conservative Party policies from 2021 to 2024, during the cost of living crisis. With

United States v. Lazarenko, 476 F.3d 642, was a landmark decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in which it was ruled that former Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Lazarenko had committed money laundering, wire fraud, and interstate transportation of stolen property by using American banks, along with banks in several other countries, to illega

In cryptocurrencies, an unspent transaction output (UTXO, often capitalized as UTxO) is a distinctive element in a subset of digital currency models. A UTXO represents a certain amount of cryptocurrency that has been authorized by a sender and is available to be spent by a recipient. The utilization of UTXOs in transaction processes is a key feature of many cryptocurrencies, but it prima

USDC (USD Coin) is a cryptocurrency stablecoin issued by Circle Internet Group. It is pegged to the United States dollar, and is distinct from a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

USI Tech Limited (also known as United Software Intelligence, or stylised as USI-TECH) was a Dubai-based cryptocurrency and forex platform trading provider, suspected to be a high-yield investment program and a Ponzi scheme. Prior to going offline with its users' funds, USI-Tech moved its website from a .com top-level domain, to a .io domain, while also appearing on a number of mirror do

Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. Modern value investing derives from the investment philosophy taught by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd at Columbia Business School starting in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis.

A variable interest entity (VIE) is a legal structure defined by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) for situations where control over a legal entity may be demonstrated through means other than voting rights. A public company with a financial interest in such entities may be subject to certain financial reporting requirements.

Virtual currency, or virtual money, is a digital currency that is typically unregulated, issued and usually controlled by its developers, and used and accepted electronically among the members of a specific virtual community as part of a virtual economy. In 2014, the European Banking Authority defined virtual currency as "a digital representation of value that is neither issued by a cent

In 2018, Iran recognized cryptocurrency mining as a legal industry in order to monitor and regulate the mining farms that were already operating. In December 2025 Iranian regime globally banned any and all transaction and transfer of cryptocurrency and along with that of in gold. In July 2018, President Hassan Rouhani's administration declared its intention of launching a national crypto

VitaNova Brands, based in San Antonio, Texas, was an operator of a number of American national buffet chain restaurants including subsidiary company Furr's. The company owned and operated Old Country Buffet, HomeTown Buffet, and Ryan's Buffet, along with Curry House.

In January 2022, 15—the pseudonymous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) artificial intelligence researcher and creator of the non-commercial generative artificial intelligence voice synthesis research project 15.ai—discovered that the blockchain-based technology company Voiceverse had plagiarized from their platform. Voiceverse marketed itself as a service that offered AI voice

In financial transactions, a warrant is a written order by one person that instructs or authorises another person to pay a specified recipient a specific amount of money or supply goods at a specific date. A warrant may or may not be negotiable and may be a bearer instrument that authorises payment to the warrant holder on demand or after a specific date. Governments and businesses may p

WhopperCoin was a cryptocurrency launched by the Russian branch of Burger King as a loyalty program in the summer of 2017. It was primarily notable for being the first issuance of branded cryptocurrency by a major company and the first form of loyalty points that could be traded freely; the BBC noted that Burger King was the "first major corporate brand to issue its own crypto-cash", wit

Wine fraud relates to dishonest behavior in the commerce of wine. The most prevalent type of fraud involves wines that are adulterated, usually with the addition of cheaper products (such as juices) and sometimes with harmful chemicals and sweeteners (compensating for color or flavor).

The XRP Ledger (XRPL), also called the Ripple Protocol, is a cryptocurrency platform launched in 2012 by Ripple Labs. The XRPL employs the native cryptocurrency known as XRP, and supports tokens, cryptocurrency or other units of value such as frequent flyer miles or mobile minutes.

In mathematical finance, X-Value Adjustment (XVA, xVA) is an umbrella term referring to a number of different "valuation adjustments" that banks must make when assessing the value of derivative contracts that they have entered into. The purpose of these is twofold: primarily to hedge for possible losses due to other parties' failures to pay amounts due on the derivative contracts; but al

In finance, the yield on a security is a measure of the ex-ante return to a holder of the security. It is one component of return on an investment, the other component being the change in the market price of the security. It is a measure applied to fixed income securities, common stocks, preferred stocks, convertible stocks and bonds, annuities and real estate investments.

York Capital Management (York Capital) is an American investment management company, founded by James Dinan and headquartered in New York City.

Youth unemployment refers to the proportion of the labor force aged 15–24 who do not have a job but are seeking employment. Young adult unemployment refers to unemployment among ages 25–34.

The yuan ( yoo-A(H)N; sign: ¥; Chinese: 圓/元; pinyin: yuán; [ɥæ̌n] ) is the base unit of currency of a number of historical and contemporary currencies throughout Greater China, such as the renminbi in the People's Republic of China and the new Taiwan dollar in the Republic of China (Taiwan). The name of the unit ultimately originates from the late Qing dynasty to refer to Mexican silver

Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency which features an encrypted ledger using zero-knowledge proofs.

Ungku Zeti Akhtar binti Ungku Abdul Aziz (born 27 August 1947) is a Malaysian economist who served as the seventh governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia from 2000 to 2016, becoming the first woman to hold the position.