Securities Industry News articles from April 2005

Securities Industry News archives from April 2005

Hedge Fund Moves Fuel Controversy.
April 4, 2005... Hedge funds can play a valuable role in futures markets by providing additional liquidity to the market, which benefits all market participants, argues a New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) study released earlier this month in response to...

Fixings' Set CDS Pricing: Service is part of a bid to create a liquid market.(credit default swaps)
April 4, 2005... Creditex, Markit Group Ltd. and some of the world's largest broker-dealers have joined forces to institute "fixings" for tradable credit default swaps--weekly electronic bid-offer auctions designed to produce pricing benchmarks in the most...

Continental Contingencies.(information management)
April 4, 2005... The disaster recovery plans of some of the largest U.S. financial institutions have gotten plenty of scrutiny since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks brought the business continuity issue into focus. Now European efforts are attracting that kind...

Style Points.(information management)
April 4, 2005... Style was all the rage last week. It was Topic A when Hewlett-Packard Co.'s board trotted out Mark Hurd as the company's new chief executive officer. In contrast to his glitzy and globe-trotting predecessor, Carly Fiorina, Hurd was known to...

Air Can Hurt You, Too:.(wireless communications)
April 4, 2005... Drive-by hacks reveal open avenues of attack on the airwaves New York has the highest percentage of unsecured wireless business networks--38 percent--of international cities surveyed in a "drive-by hacking" study of metropolitan-area mobile...

CBOE to Roll Out Remote Market-Maker Program.(Chicago Board Options Exchange)
April 4, 2005... The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) will roll out a remote market-making program next month. "It was our goal to open access to the CBOE up to electronic quoters as well as floor-based quoters," said Edward Tilly, vice chairman of...

Nearshore Renewal in Northern Ireland.
April 4, 2005... Citigroup is set to become the first global banking institution to set up shop in Belfast, Northern Ireland to develop IT applications for its Europe, Middle East and African operations, raising the city's profile as a "nearshore" technology...

OneChicago: Several Points of View.
April 4, 2005... OneChicago, an electronic exchange that offers futures on some 130 equity issues as well as exchange-traded funds, disclosed this month that it is looking to sell a stake to an outside investor. The decision is regarded as a positive business...

ADP Wilco Taps an Alpha Kag.(Lupus alpha)
April 4, 2005... German asset manager and hedge fund first mover Lupus alpha recently announced that it will use ADP Wilco's Swift service bureau, reflecting a growing tendency among German fund managers to outsource back-office functions following a relaxation...

Increasingly, Disaster Recovery Starts at Home.
April 4, 2005... Some of the nation's largest financial services firms have scaled back engagements or severed previous relationships with business continuity providers, keeping their contingency planning in-house in order to maintain more control over making...

Q&A With Tocom's Takamichi Hamada.
April 4, 2005... The Tokyo Commodities Exchange (Tocom) has made strides toward increasing both its global presence and its operational efficiency this past year. In an interview with Securities Industry News' Alexa Jaworski, Tocom president and CEO Takamichi...

Plunkett to Competitors: Play It Straight.(Michael Plunkett)
April 4, 2005... Brokerage commissions continue to tighten, and algorithmic trading is changing the nature of the institutional market. Michael Plunkett, president of Instinet North America--Reuters' institutional brokerage arm--since 2003, recently decided to...

New HP CEO Has Wall Street in Mind.
April 4, 2005... Last week, Hewlett-Packard named Mark Hurd, former head of NCR, as its new CEO, ending the two months of uncertainty that followed the ouster of Carly Fiorina. Hurd will serve as president and chief executive. Patricia Dunn will continue to...

People in the News.
April 4, 2005... The New York offices of the Securities and Exchange Commission will abandon the Woolworth Building for roomier digs at 3 World Financial Center in April. The 400 New York employees were notified of the move early last month. A representative of...

SunGard's Cris Conde: Buy and Hold.
April 4, 2005... In the wake of the $11.3 billion leveraged buyout of SunGard Data Systems announced last week by Silver Lake Partners, the Blackstone Group, Texas Pacific Group, Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and...

GL Trade Fits Acquisitions Into One Box.
April 4, 2005... GL Trade, a financial technology vendor based in Paris, is in the process of combining a globe-spanning variety of companies it has acquired in recent years and integrating several of their technologies into a product it plans to release this...

Shanghai: The FIX Is In.(financial information exchange)
April 4, 2005... China has been racing to join the world financial community at a breakneck pace. Last week, the country met another milestone of sorts when FIX vendor Cameron Systems opened an office in Shanghai--China's financial capital. Cameron thus...

Watchdog Has London Bidders Backing Off.
April 4, 2005... The Deutsche Borse's bid of 530 pence per share for the London Stock Exchange must be looking pretty good to LSE shareowners right now: The LSE's value fell almost 5 percent last week following the news that the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading...

Reg NMS Passes 32: "Top of book" trade-through rule prevails as e-markets finally get their due, supporters say.
April 11, 2005... Regulation NMS, adopted by a 32 margin at the April 6 open meeting of the Securities and Exchange Commission, represents a long overdue recognition of, and accommodation to, the significant inroads made by electronic trading in recent years....

Desperately Seeking CCOs': Hedge fund compliance preparation hangs on compensation questions: roundtable.(chief compliance officers)
April 11, 2005... Hedge funds are having a hard time satisfying the demand for chief compliance officers, and a major reason is compensation--specifically, whether the performance-based compensation model that is common in the hedge fund industry should also...

Swift Sends a Message.
April 11, 2005... Swift is getting ready to embark on a campaign that some industry observers are concerned will result in the use of Swift messages being made mandatory for clearing and settlement within the European Union--shutting other messaging formats out...

Falling From Grace.
April 11, 2005... April has been the cruelest month for some of the industry's most powerful figures. Last week it was announced that Deutsche Borse CEO Werner Seifert, Europe's most visible exchange chief, would step down next year when his contract came up for...

Meet John Q. Public.
April 11, 2005... Unlike Charles Geisst's Wall Street: A History, which stands shoulder to shoulder with the mob in the gutter market and pores over every order slip left on the floor at the end of the day, Steve Fraser's Every Man a Speculator: A History of...

Brennan Carley: Directing Traffic.
April 11, 2005... Brennan Carley, chief technology officer of Radianz, a connectivity provider to the global financial community, recently discussed the potential repercussions of the Securities and Exchange Commision's Regulation NMS on the industry and his own...

FISD's Ambitious Best Practices Push.(Financial Information Services Division )
April 11, 2005... The Financial Information Services Division (FISD) of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) released a sweeping set of market data service guidelines last week in an effort to get data sources and distributors to adhere to...

WestCom Amplifies Hoot n' Holler' Capability.(Global Crossing Ltd.)
April 11, 2005... WestCom will significantly expand its "hoot n' holler" network for traders with its $25 million acquisition of Global Crossing's Trader Voice unit, announced last month. The Trader Voice Exchange Network, which already has 1,000 locations,...

International Foursome Joins Forces on MiFID.(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive )
April 11, 2005... Four cornerstones of the securities industry standards community--FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL), the International Standards Association for Institutional Trade Communication (ISITC) Europe, the Reference Data User Group (RDUG) and the Financial...

FIXML Coming to a Back Office Near You.(Financial Information Exchange Markup Language (FIX Protocol Ltd.) )
April 11, 2005... In the futures and options markets, FIXML is approaching critical mass. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC), the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) and the New York Board of Trade (Nybot) all plan to...

Clearstream, Euroclear Debate Collateral.
April 11, 2005... Luxembourg's pending adoption of a European Union directive, which harmonizes the way in which collateral can be used in all EU member states, has prompted some fierce interchange between the locally based international securities depository...

FSA Avoids Taking Hard Line on Softies.(Financial Services Authority)
April 11, 2005... The Financial Services Authority's (FSA) recent recommendations on the use of soft-dollar commissions is a balancing act, addressing some of the concerns of the U.K.'s investment banking community in exchange for exacting a degree of increased...

BearingPoint Reflects on Two Years in China.
April 11, 2005... BearingPoint's top executives gathered in Shanghai last week to discuss the state of China's financial services sector. BearingPoint is well positioned to sit in on such a discussion--the consulting firm serves three of China's "big four"...

The Graying of Ameritrade.(Ameritrade Holding Corp.)
April 11, 2005... Ameritrade Holding Corp. is one of three online brokerages--E-Trade Financial Corp. and Charles Schwab Corp. are the others--that are closely identified to this day with the Internet trading boom of the 1990s. But all three predated the dot-com...

Opportunities and Threats: Index Products in the Global Village.(Dow Jones and Company Inc.)(Interview)
April 11, 2005... In an interview with Securities Industry News markets reporter Alexa Jaworski, Michael Petronella, president of Dow Jones Indexes/Ventures, elaborated on the impact of derivatives trading on the index, multiple listings and nonexclusive...

IBM Sharpens Its Blade Offerings: Early adopter Nyfix says BladeServer cut through complexity of Linux migration.
April 11, 2005... IBM is promoting its newest line of blade servers as an attractive proposition to users in the financial services sector, and already boasts several prominent adopters in the industry, including Nyfix and UBS. The IBM eServer BladeCenter...

Industry Sees NYSE as NMS Winner.(New York Stock Exchange Inc)
April 11, 2005... The Securities and Exchange Commission's approval of Regulation NMS, which among other things will extend the trade-through rule across all markets, is being viewed by industry watchers as a victory for the New York Stock Exchange. "I...

Knight Moves.(Knight Trading Group Inc.)
April 11, 2005... Twin announcements by Knight Trading Group last week underscored the growing importance of the hedge fund business at a time when Knight's traditional market-making operation is under severe pricing pressure. The company said it had reached an...

Microsoft: Moving Backups Forward: Helping two-thirds of the world's servers escape the tape trap, Redmond claims.
April 11, 2005... According to Microsoft, there are three main problems with tape backups: They're slow, the data they contain is not up to date, and they're not very reliable. Worse, the alternatives to tape--disk backups and mirroring--are prohibitively...

Directed Order Plan Riles Rivals.
April 18, 2005... Friction is building in the options market-making world, pitting exchange against exchange and involving some options players in a tussle with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the meaning of the word "competition." Separate but...

Pricing Right: Markit launches "present value" service for credit swaps as search for consistent way to calculate NAV continues.(Markit Group Ltd.)
April 18, 2005... Last week, Markit Group Ltd. entered the growing market for the outsourcing of pricing services for credit default swaps (CDS) and index trades with a product designed for small to midsize hedge funds, asset managers and fund administrators....

Exit Bookbinder.(Stephen Bookbinder to depart from eSpeed Inc.)
April 18, 2005... Anyone looking for some much-needed good news for eSpeed was disappointed again last week. The company announced that Stephen Bookbinder, managing director and head of sales, who came over from Bloomberg last July with great fanfare as a key...

The New Marshall.(Marshall Carter resigns)
April 18, 2005... In 2001, as the financial services industry, like every industry, was reeling under the collapse of the infamous tech bubble, Marshall Carter retired as chairman and chief executive officer of State Street Corp. During Carter's nine-year...

The Captives Are Restless.(outsourcing)
April 18, 2005... Financial firms that set up captive "in-sourcing" operations overseas are starting to face some of the same staffing issues experienced by outsourcing vendors--and can learn a few things from those vendors when it comes to keeping their foreign...

Reuters IM Network Downed by Kelvir Infestation.(Reuters Group PLC)(instant messaging)
April 18, 2005... Reuters confirmed last week that it shut down its instant messaging service after an attack by a new variety of the W32/Kelvir worm. According to spokesperson Denise Behrens, Reuters shut down the messaging system in order to protect...

NYSE, SEC Reach Settlement in Specialists Fraud Case.(New York Stock Exchange)(Securities and Exchange Commission)
April 18, 2005... The New York Stock Exchange has agreed to a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over charges brought last week against former NYSE specialists for alleged securities fraud violations. The SEC said that the NYSE, over a...

Fidelity to Boost Unified Accounts.(Fidelity Investments)
April 18, 2005... With so many investment vehicles available today, each representing another account that financial advisers may have to manage, it's no wonder brokerage firms have sought ways to tie them together. Fidelity Investments' National Financial unit...

Liquidnet's Merrin: Sell-Side Drivers Drying Up.(Seth Merrin)(TradeTech 2005)
April 18, 2005... At the TradeTech 2005 conference in New York early this month, Seth Merrin, CEO of Liquidnet, discussed the shifting perceptions of what different market participations consider valuable in a presentation titled, "Institutional Trading:...

SunGard Unit Enters Cross-Border Sec Lending.(securities)(SunGard Data Systems Inc.)
April 18, 2005... Until now, securities lending was one of Wall Street's few remaining relationship-driven businesses, based on the personal knowledge of stock loan desks about who wants to borrow and who wants to lend. In recent years, however, automation and...

Futures Merchants Get Break From Feds on Customer ID.(identification)
April 18, 2005... In what could be a precedent-setting ruling, the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has relaxed its requirements for customer identification programs (CIPs) as specified by Section 326 of the USA Patriot Act. The ruling will...

FinCEN Files Brief in SARs Disclosure Suit.(suspicious activity reports)(Financial Crimes Enforcement Network)
April 18, 2005... As the swelling volume of suspicious activity reports (SARs) continues to raise concerns among both regulators and the regulated, this self- perpetuating paper chase may be inadvertently flooding law enforcement agencies with reports that...

Hirschfeld: New Job, Old World.(David Hirschfeld)(Asset Control International)
April 18, 2005... After a string of wins in Europe, Asset Control, a Netherlands firm that is one of the best-known data management software vendors on the other side of the Atlantic, is trying to make its mark in the U.S., where competition and a history of...

Ivy Leaguers Book Passage to India.(OfficeTiger)
April 18, 2005... Lost your credit card? Changing your name? Not a problem: Just call the toll-free number and a friendly English speaker halfway around the world will take your call. This is what outsourcing reflexively calls to mind these days: a telephone...

From Monrovia To Mumbai: Lehman Abroad.(Lehman Brothers)
April 18, 2005... Lehman Brothers, one of the most astute and aggressive of Wall Street's offshore outsourcers, is nearing completion of a dedicated application development center in Mumbai. Such captive centers have become a hot trend among investment banks,...

People in the News.
April 18, 2005... The federal government last week accused three British citizens, Dhiran Barot, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi, of scouting financial services industry facilities in New York and New Jersey in 2000 and 2001 as part of a plot to launch...

Rama Pillai on The Singapore Swing.(Singapore Exchange Ltd.)(Interview)
April 18, 2005... Over the last year, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) has kept close to the leaders in the worldwide push toward electronic trading, moving its derivatives market from an open-outcry system to a fully electronic platform. Most recently, the exchange...

Radianz Hosts DMA Confab.(Panel Discussion)
April 18, 2005... The Times Square studio of ABC's Good Morning America provided the backdrop on April 4 for "Implementing DMA: Technology Challenges and Implications," an interactive panel discussion sponsored by global connectivity merchant Radianz. Four...

Buy and Sell Sides Debate The Future.
April 18, 2005... Executives from prominent buy-side and sell-side firms gathered at the TradeTech USA conference in midtown Manhattan in early April to consider the state of a relationship strained by rapidly advancing technology, the competitive pressures of...

The Merc Rolls Out Chinese-Language Web Site.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
April 18, 2005... In its latest move to build bridges to the potentially vast Chinese securities markets, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has created a Chinese version of its Web site. "It's about being a global company but acting locally," Allan...

Long-Term Impact of Reg NMS on NYSE Unclear: Aite Group.(New York Stock Exchange)
April 18, 2005... While the New York Stock Exchange has been viewed by many as the clear winner in the Securities Exchange Commission's approval of Regulation NMS last week, the long-term impacts of the regulation on the exchange are still up in the air,...

HedgeStreet Rolls Out Variable Hedgelets'.
April 18, 2005... HedgeStreet, an online venue that lets retail investors trade financial instruments based on future economic events, announced last week the addition of a new category of financial instruments called "variable hedgelets." The main...

Events Markets For the Masses.(Iowa Electronic Markets)
April 18, 2005... The idea of giving ordinary people a venue in which to bet on the outcome of future events has been percolating in the public mind for some time now: Prediction markets and events markets--some serious, some silly--have received their share of...

NYSE and Nasdaq Deals Are Talk of the Town.
April 25, 2005... The planned merger of the New York Stock Exchange with Archipelago Holdings, announced last week, is a climactic event in the decade-long shakeout of consolidation and technology in the financial markets, with far-reaching implications on...

SEC Fines Fiserv; GAO Faults SEC.(Securities and Exchange Commission)(Fiserv Securities inc)(Government Accountability Office)
April 25, 2005... The Securities and Exchange Commission announced a settlement with Fiserv Securities and the firm's former chief operating officer late last week over charges of involvement in illegal trading activity in mutual funds. It also brought civil...

Convergence Jitters.
April 25, 2005... "Convergence" was the hot topic at the Bond Market Association's annual meeting in New York--a phenomenon that excites traders but scares the hell out of those who monitor risk in the capital markets. The term refers to the process by...

The New York Way.(Merger)
April 25, 2005... Out of their entire arsenal of journalistic cliches, pundits and sportswriters seem particularly fond of statements of the following form: "An X gets the Y it deserves." A country gets the politicians it deserves; an organization gets the...

The Buy Side Knows No Borders.
April 25, 2005... Though overshadowed by breaking local news, the European Commission arrived in New York last week, en route to Washington, D.C., for talks that included direct conversations between Charlie McGreevy, the European commissioner for internal...

Open for Business.
April 25, 2005... At the Linux on Wall Street conference, held in New York on April 20, financial firms and software developers testified to how the Linux operating system and other open-source applications have provided them with more control over their...

China Reform: Catalyst for Regional Bond Market.
April 25, 2005... Now that China has embraced the World Trade Organization and is opening up to everything else that the capitalist world has to offer, it no longer presents an obstacle to the creation of pan-Asian financial mechanisms, such as a regional bond...

CBOT Demutualizes, Odds Makers Favor IPO.(Chicago Board of Trade)
April 25, 2005... The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) voted in favor of a restructuring proposal that includes the demutualization of the exchange and its restructuring as a for-profit, stock-based holding company with a for-profit, exchange subsidiary run on a...

SwiftNet Adds FMCNet as Post-Trade Option.(Financial Models Co.)
April 25, 2005... Software vendor Financial Models Co. has expanded its relationship with Swift, joining the messaging network as an electronic trade confirmation (ETC) vendor, FMC officials announced last week. The move means that investment firms will be...

FIA Questions Swift Conclusions on EU Clearing Solutions.(Futures Industry Association)
April 25, 2005... In order to secure the industry's support for its findings, Swift will soon meet with some or all of the organizations that commented on the consultation paper it released in response to the Giovannini Group's report on clearance and settlement...

Xinhua Finance Launches Data Service.(Xinhua Financial China Insight)
April 25, 2005... Xinhua Finance, a major Chinese financial information provider, launched a product last week that combines financial news, credit ratings, data about company fundamentals and other information of interest to investors. The product, called...

SEC Processes First Forays Into XBRL Filing.(Securities and Exchange Commission)(extensible business reporting language)
April 25, 2005... The Securities and Exchange Commission's rule on its voluntary extensible business reporting language (XBRL) filing program went into effect this month, as announced Feb. 3. The SEC now accepts data for specific filings tagged in XBRL. "In...

Indian Outsourcers Seek Remedy for Attrition Blues.
April 25, 2005... While it has arguably been India's strongest engine of economic growth, the business process and IT outsourcing market is getting increasingly congested and competitive--a fact that poses a new set of challenges for participants. That was the...

SEC Borrowers, Beware.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
April 25, 2005... Leslie Nelson, managing director of global securities lending for Goldman Sachs & Co., issued a stern warning to broker-dealers last week at the Bond Market Association's annual meeting in New York. "We are concerned that few broker-dealers...

Event-Driven Algo.(acquisition helping algorithmic trading strategy)(Apama Ltd.)
April 25, 2005... With the announcement in early April that it will acquire Apama Ltd. for $25 million, Progress Software is upping the ante in both algorithmic trading and data management. The acquisition will bring together Apama's algorithmic trading...

Event Stream Processing For Dummies.
April 25, 2005... With their new partnership, Progress Software and Apama are all set to leverage a method known as event stream processing (ESP), which enables business decisions to be made when the events occur rather than after the fact, by monitoring and...

Hookups and Rollouts.
April 25, 2005... Bowing to popular demand, we reintroduce our Systems & Services section this week--a selection of current technology announcements that strike us as strategically important, innovative, trendy or just plain interesting. Submissions can be sent...

You Can Go Home Again: FIX Founder Jim Leman.(Financial Information Exchange (NYSE))
April 25, 2005... Less than a year after joining SunGard's Brass division following a 20-year stint at Salomon Smith Barney and Citigroup, Jim Leman, one of the founding fathers of the FIX Protocol, has joined HSBC as an MD and head of execution trading for the...

New Brass for Brass.
April 25, 2005... SunGard Data Systems' Brass trading technology unit lost a chief several days ago as equities industry veteran Jim Leman departed for HSBC after a year on the job (see page 26). But the SunGard trading organization, part of the financial...

Industry Split on Future of NYSE's Hybrid Model.(Newyork Stock Exchange)
April 25, 2005... When the merger between the New York Stock Exchange and Archipelago Holdings is approved and finalized, the NYSE Group will have three trading platforms: its floor, Archipelago's electronic platform and the NYSE Hybrid Market, which is still...