Equity Index Operations - Corporate Actions Specialist

About Scientific Beta

Scientific Beta, an SGX and EDHEC venture, is the name of the smart beta index provision activity originally set up by the EDHEC Risk Institute, the applied finance research centre of EDHEC Business School. On January 31, 2020, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) acquired a majority stake in Scientific Beta with the commitment to maintain the strong collaboration with EDHEC Business School, and principles of independent and empirical-based academic research, that have benefited Scientific Beta’s development to date.

Scientific Beta is an original initiative, which aims to favour the adoption of the latest advances in smart beta, green and thematic index design and implementation by the whole investment industry. Its academic origin provides the foundation for its strategy: offer, in the best economic conditions possible, the smart beta, green and thematic solutions that are most proven scientifically with full transparency of both the methods and the associated risks. In particular, Scientific Beta launched in 2021 a unique series of pure climate indices that translates companies' climate performance and alignment engagement into portfolio decisions. As of June 30, 2021, the Scientific Beta indices corresponded to USD 63.75bn in assets under replication.

Scientific Beta has a dedicated team of 52 people across the world who cover development, production, operation, client services and promotion of its index offering. To strengthen its operations team in Nice, Scientific Beta is recruiting a Corporate Actions Specialist.

Main tasks:

·       Prepare implementation of the corporate actions within the equity indices, in compliance with existing in-house processing, maintenance and index construction methodologies.

o    Validate all data and information relating to corporate actions (this includes, but is not restricted to: collection of event announcements, analysis of their qualitative and quantitative contents, cross-check of underlying data between all possible alternative electronic sources).

o    Follow-up and maintain the preview of upcoming corporate actions on a daily basis, communicate the operations of the day for execution of the corporate events by the whole operations team.

o    Set up and manage all announcements to index clients.

·       Participate to the referential management (financial and extra-financial data checks) to ensure data quality.

·       Participate to client support advanced questions / data requests.

Experience and education:

·       Proven experience (2 years is a minimum) in a corporate action-oriented role in a middle office environment, either within an asset management company involved in the international index replication business, or an index provider. A deep knowledge on how corporate actions impact the index (or portfolio) performance is mandatory.

·       More generally, some experience in equity portfolio valuation is required: this includes data referential maintenance, data quality treatment, evaluation and reconciliation of different data sources for pricing issues and performance spread assessment between a fund and its reference benchmark.

·       Degree (Bachelor is a minimum) in Finance is mandatory.

 Skills:

·         Proficiency in financial data electronic services (e.g. Bloomberg, Datascope and Datastream).

·         Familiarity with spreadsheet product and proficiency in financial data management.

·         Attention to detail, strong work ethic. Ability to work autonomously and as part of a team while respecting an established methodology.

·         Written and spoken English is essential; spoken French speaking would be an asset.

The salary will be determined according to the company’s pay scale, based on the candidate’s qualifications and prior experience. Preferred location is Nice (France) but Singapore based applications will be considered as well.

For more information about Scientific Beta, please visit www.scientificbeta.com. 

To apply (job ref. OP-IA), please send your CV and a cover letter.