What Is The Structured Products Association?

The Structured Products Association (SPA) is a New York-based trade group whose mission includes positioning structured products as a distinct asset class; promoting financial innovation among member firms; developing model “best practices” for members and their firms; identifying legal, tax, compliance and regulatory challenges to the business. With more than 2000 members, the Association has members from the exchanges, self-regulatory bodies, legal compliance community financial media, investor networks, family offices, and both buy-side and sell-side structured product firms.

The primary purposes of Structured Products Association are:

• position structured products as a distinct asset class
• promote financial innovation among member firms
• develop model "best practices" for member organizations
• identify issues related to legal, tax, and compliance

Founder and Chairman, Structured Products Association

Keith Styrcula is the founder and chairman of the Structured Products Association and was a senior marketer in JPMorgan’s Structured Solutions group until January 2006.

His career started in 1991 when he joined CSFB’s Legal Department from Fordham University School of Law to oversee legal, regulatory and compliance issues related to First Boston’s derivatives effort. While practicing as a derivatives attorney, he was a member of the FIA Law & Compliance Executive Committee, the SIA Options and Derivatives committee and served on the Business Conduct Committee of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange.

He moved to the business side of equity derivatives in February 1997, reporting to the head of equity derivatives at SBC Warburg (renamed UBS following the merger). At UBS, he created the first structured product linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (issued by IBM). He returned to CSFB in July 2000 to launch the structured products platform for the newly acquired DLJ Private Client Services group, which placed $1.2 billion in its first year. He founded the 1,700-member Structured Products Association in August 2003. www.structuredproducts.org .

He is frequently quoted in the financial media as an authority on derivatives, structured products and the next generation of investments for U.S. and was profiled in the February 2004 issue of Risk magazine on his vision for the future of structured investments. The March 2006 issue of Structured Products Magazine interviewed him on his groundbreaking new structured products platform he launched in the U.S.