Securities Industry News articles from April 2006

Securities Industry News archives from April 2006

MiFID: The Continental Shift in Markets: Combined with NMS, law is a double whammy for multinational firms - Last of a series.(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive)(National Market System)
April 3, 2006... What Regulation NMS is to the U.S., MiFID is to Europe: They are nearly concurrent, sweeping market reforms requiring advance planning and significant preparatory expenditures by financial institutions and market centers. But the parallels...

Best-Execution Math, Predictively.(software development for meeting regulatory compliance)
April 3, 2006... However "best execution" may be defined, there is little argument that it is a worthy ideal, now almost statutorily exalted as a centerpiece of the European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) and its U.S. equities-market...

Reuters Unveils A Higher-Octane Data Platform.(Reuters Group)(new software)
April 3, 2006... In its latest move to support the securities industry's increasing data and high-frequency trading needs, Reuters Group today is releasing a new version of the Reuters Market Data System (RMDS). Enhanced and reengineered, the higher-performance...

ISITC Message: Standards Role Comes Naturally.(International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication)
April 3, 2006... The world of financial industry standards is under reconstruction. At least that was the recurring theme at the 12th annual industry forum and vendor show of the International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication (ISITC)...

Industry Consortium Pursues Standards for Business Continuity: Founder returns to FSTC, zeroes in on resiliency benchmarks.
April 3, 2006... The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) has enlisted 15 institutions and vendors to set financial industry standards or benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of business continuity and disaster recovery plans. The effort,...

Tick Data Touts Low Cost of Real-Time Data Feed.(TickStream, a low-latency, real-time market data feed and hosting solution for high-frequency traders of equities, futures and options. )
April 3, 2006... The Tick Data division of Nexa Technologies, the trading technology subsidiary of Dallas-based Penson Worldwide, is announcing today the rollout of TickStream, a low-latency, real-time market data feed and hosting solution for high-frequency...

Cantor Gaming's Winning Streak.(Cantor Gaming division gained approval from the Nevada Gaming Commission)
April 3, 2006... It's hard to gauge the performance of interdealer brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald because it's privately held, but its success as a gaming industry vendor (see "Cantor's Wager on Gambling" in the Feb. 20 Securities Industry News) is increasingly...

More Clearing Shakeout.(TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. reached an agreement to transfer its 15 correspondents to Southwest Securities of Dallas)
April 3, 2006... Another small clearing operation disappeared last week as TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. reached an agreement to transfer its 15 correspondents to Southwest Securities of Dallas. Even before TD Waterhouse merged into Ameritrade in January,...

People In The News.(Dan Keegan joins Automated Trading Desk )
April 3, 2006... Automated Trading Desk (ATD) of Mount Pleasant, S.C., a pioneer in high-tech trade execution and market making, has hired Dan Keegan to lead its institutional business. Keegan started JP Morgan Securities' electronic execution services and also...

Regulation and (Lack of) Action.(securities law)
April 3, 2006... If there is one thing that stands out from the hearing record that accompanied New York Stock Exchange Regulation's censure and $250 million penalty against Bear Stearns & Co. (see excerpts in last week's Securities Industry News), it is that...

A War Over Annuities.(Annuities)
April 3, 2006... Big insurance and investment players are engaged in a heated battle as part of the ongoing war for domination of the financial services industry. But this is not just the normal competitive jockeying that goes on among companies and opposing...

CME Brings Central Counterparty to OTC Clearing.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
April 3, 2006... The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) said it is launching a comprehensive clearing program for over-the-counter market participants. Dubbed CME Clearing360 and expected to start today, it will be an extension of the CME Clearing package and is...

CBOE To Automate Flex Options.(Chicago Board Options Exchange selects system from Cinnober Financial Technology )
April 3, 2006... The Chicago Board Options Exchange has selected a system from Stockholm-based Cinnober Financial Technology to automate the trading of customized equity or index option contracts known as Flex options. CBOE expects to launch its CBOEFlex.net...

Search Technology Gets Smarter.
April 3, 2006... As the volume of information coursing through securities firms continues to expand, so does the need for search engines capable of anticipating and producing more relevant, targeted results than those of currently available software. With an...

ABN Amro Fortifies Compliance Searches.(supplied by Aungate, a division of Autonomy Corp)
April 3, 2006... Dutch banking giant ABN Amro has put in place a compliance system with a high-tech search feature designed to improve information gathering for 400 compliance officers worldwide. The system's key feature is a Web-based portal that the bank...

Citigroup Among First to Appoint Chief Data Officer.(John Bottega )
April 3, 2006... Citigroup's corporate and investment banking (CIB) unit is blazing a new management trail with the appointment of John Bottega as chief data officer (CDO). It's a new position at Citigroup and is the first such "C-level" post for data...

Analysis: Nasdaq Pulls Bid, But LSE and Many Others Are Still in Play.(London Stock Exchange's acquisition)
April 3, 2006... The Nasdaq Stock Market pulled its $4.2 billion bid for the London Stock Exchange last week, refusing to significantly raise its offer despite the appreciation in LSE shares since the merger discussions were disclosed in early March. And so the...

Citigroup Clearer May Grab Its First Correspondent.(Cuttone & Co)
April 3, 2006... Citigroup's new clearing unit is negotiating to reel in Cuttone & Co. as what appears to be its first independent broker-dealer correspondent, an exchange-floor broker and mini-prime with a business profile that varies from what the clearer...

Eze Castle in Code Red Link.(Eze Castle Software has integrated two of its products, with the Red Alerts research management system of Code Red)
April 3, 2006... Eze Castle Software has integrated two of its products, the Traders Console order management system (OMS) and Commission Optimizer, with the Red Alerts research management system of Code Red, a Boston company co-founded in 2004 by Eze Castle...

Doing More With More: Reuters and Dow Jones in Data Technology Tie-Ins.(Dow Jones Total Coverage)(online trading information)
April 10, 2006... With an eye on cross-asset-class trading and buy- and sell-side demand for tools to sift through vast volumes of market and company data, Dow Jones & Co. has teamed up with Relegence Corp. to offer a comprehensive "command center" for sorting...

Doing More With More: Reuters and Dow Jones in Data Technology Tie-Ins.(Users are now able to view the trade ideas on their Reuters 3000 Xtra screens, along with related price quotes, news and analytics)
April 10, 2006... Reuters Group announced last week that it is the first vendor to distribute the Trade Idea Monitor (TIM) system that youDevise of London developed for brokerages to transmit trading suggestions to buy-side and money manager clients. Users...

On the Oats Trail: Deadline for Recording Manual Orders Looms.(order audit trail system )(all orders for Nasdaq stocks and their receipt times be recorded, regardless of how an order is communicated to a brokerage firm)
April 10, 2006... On May 8, new order audit trail system (Oats) rules will take effect, requiring that all orders for Nasdaq stocks and their receipt times be recorded, regardless of how an order is communicated to a brokerage firm. Under what the National...

Hedge Funds Give Hosted VoIP a Hearing: Where time is money, Internet phone technology is easy sell.(voice-over-Internet-protocol phone systems)
April 10, 2006... Dan Hoffman, president and CEO of M5 Networks, likes the way hedge funds and other financial services firms are making telecommunications decisions these days. "Basically, they just don't want to deal with them," Hoffman says of these...

VoIP on Trading Desks Starting to Take Off: Survey.
April 10, 2006... After a slow start, trading desks are poised to pick up their use of voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) technology, according to a recent survey by U.K. telecommunications giant BT Group, which is selling a VoIP version of its trading turret...

Hedge Fund Growth Piques State Agencies' Interest.
April 10, 2006... Do hedge funds belong on Main Street? State securities regulators want to know. At a forum on the issue, convened in New York last week by the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), industry experts pointed out that much...

NYSE Action.(New York Stock Exchange)
April 10, 2006... Last week, as the NYSE Composite index hovered around record highs, the New York Stock Exchange and the former Archipelago Holdings marked their first month as the combined NYSE Group. On Friday it released its first monthly volume report:...

17 in SEC Pilot.(Securities and Exchange Commission)(one-year pilot program for submitting filings in extensible business reporting language (XBRL))
April 10, 2006... The Securities and Exchange Commission said 17 companies have joined its one-year pilot program for submitting filings in extensible business reporting language (XBRL). Reviews of their filings will be expedited as a result. The SEC...

Money for Pivot.(Pivot Solutions closes its fund)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Pivot Solutions, the 2004 spin-off of Boston-based Eze Castle Integration that sells the IMTrader system for trade communications via instant messaging, has closed an $8 million, series B funding round. The company is expected to announce as...

People In The News.(Henry Ann joins Tullett Prebon Information)(Tonya Gross joins Precision Investment Technologies)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Tullett Prebon Information, the money-markets, derivatives and fixed-income market data business that London-based interdealer brokerage group Collins Stewart Tullett formed last year, has a new chief, Henry Ann. A member of the Tullett Prebon...

What, You Worry?(online fraud)
April 10, 2006... In the world of online banking and investment transactions, it's literally spy versus spy, with adware undercover agents surreptitiously tracking customer behavior while illegal, mass-e-mail-generating phishing enthusiasts cast their digital...

How Exchanges Have Changed.(Interview)
April 10, 2006... The recent ferment in the world of securities exchanges--the New York Stock Exchange's emergence as a public company, the Nasdaq Stock Market's rebuffed bid for the London Stock Exchange, the tentative courting of Euronext by Deutsche Borse and...

Not Too Much Information.(financial data disclosure)
April 10, 2006... In a congressional hearing last month, Securities Industry Association (SIA) president Marc Lackritz defended the current state of U.S. financial data disclosure and praised publishing innovations such as the one supported by the Securities and...

Goldman Sachs and UBS Invest in UNX.
April 10, 2006... In the latest of a series of moves by Wall Street firms to take ownership of advanced and entrepreneurial trading technology developments, Goldman Sachs Group and UBS have purchased minority stakes in high-tech agency brokerage UNX of Burbank,...

Swift Again Endorses ISO Formats for EU Harmonization.(International Organization for Standardization formats for European Union)
April 10, 2006... The Swift messaging consortium has published in final form its recommendation to adopt two standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as a means of harmonizing clearing- and settlement-related communications in the...

It Takes a Community: You might need a scorecard to know all the players, but the financial industry has effectively used collective action to strengthen its "critical infrastructure".(Security threats)
April 10, 2006... In the 1990s, amid a booming peacetime economy, the Clinton administration forced the financial services industry to take a close look at its vulnerability to external and operational threats and its ability to recover from disasters of any...

No Magic Bullets, But Better Approaches.(Identity protection service)
April 10, 2006... Information security wasn't invented a decade ago, but that's when the advent of Internet commerce raised its profile to near-crisis proportions, and the financial services industry was--and remains--a prime target of cyber attackers. "The...

Herding the Sector.(Donald F. Donahue's interview )(industry's security and resiliency )(Interview)
April 10, 2006... For almost two years, Donald F. Donahue has been the financial industry's point man on matters relating to the resiliency of its infrastructure and its ability to recover from terrorist attacks, cyber crimes and natural disasters. Donahue, COO...

Compliance Boosts Federated Identity.(Physical-logical security)
April 10, 2006... The time for federated identity management--one of those big dot-com-era ideas for allowing credentials issued by one company to be used in transacting online business with another--has never quite arrived. But Internet commerce is only getting...

Security as a Selling Point: E-Trade, Schwab make fraud protection guarantees to online customers.
April 10, 2006... In January, E-Trade Financial Corp. did something that no other brokerage had done: It promised to cover all customer losses due to online fraud. Charles Schwab & Co. followed suit in February, putting these firms in the vanguard of trying to...

In Fending Off Suitors, LSE Says Its Technology Gets No Respect.(London Stock Exchange officially reacted last week to the Nasdaq Stock Market's purchase of 15 percent of its shares)
April 17, 2006... When the London Stock Exchange (LSE) officially reacted last week to the Nasdaq Stock Market's purchase of 15 percent of its shares, it repeated a defense it had offered in the face of previous takeover approaches: that no proposed bid had...

Big, Global Institutions Gaining Competitive Advantage: IBM Study: Long-term trends in risk, speed and transparency seen as boons to investors.(technological application in capital market)
April 17, 2006... The capital markets industry has enjoyed a 15 percent overall return on equity over the last decade, compared with 8.7 percent for the average corporation, but according to an extensive long-term outlook being published this week by IBM Corp.,...

Fallout From 03: Law and Technology: One More Time Around for the SEC's Mutual Fund Independence Rule.(United States. Securities and Exchange Commission)
April 17, 2006... A funny thing appears to have happened on the way to implementing the Securities and Exchange Commission's long-delayed mutual fund governance reforms: In the wake of an April 7 court decision to send them back to the SEC for a second time,...

NSCC Will Address Market Timing.(National Securities Clearing Corporation)
April 17, 2006... Six months before the compliance date of a Securities and Exchange Commission rule designed to curtail market-timing practices, the National Securities Clearing Corp. (NSCC) said it will have a solution in place to address the problem by...

Tokyo's Recovery.(Tokyo Stock Exchange's afternoon session got delayed due to sysem error on 18jan, about to resume normal trading hours within weeks)(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), which has delayed its afternoon sessions by 30 minutes since its systems couldn't cope with a spike in trading volume on Jan. 18, wants to resume normal trading hours within weeks. Exchange spokesperson Mitsuo...

GA in India.(General Atlantic Corp.)(Company overview)(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... Fresh off its $160 million purchase of a 10 percent stake in Nymex Holdings, the parent of the New York Mercantile Exchange, Greenwich, Conn.-based private equity firm General Atlantic (GA) has made a financial markets investment much farther...

Charles River & Markit.(Charles River Systems Inc.)(Markit Group)(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... Eyeing the burgeoning credit derivatives market, Charles River Development of Burlington, Mass. announced an agreement last week to integrate the pricing and reference entity data of Markit Group into the multi-asset-class, front- and...

People INn The News.(Everett F. Lang appointed chief business development officer)(Ernest Patrikis appointed head of financial services regulatory practice)
April 17, 2006... Brokerage industry veteran Everett F. Lang, former president and CEO of National Discount Brokers (NDB), has joined Integrated Trade Processing Corp. (ITP) as chief business development officer. He will be responsible for identifying strategic...

Getting Past "Old Man Scrooge".(views of Paul S. Atkins, Republican Securities and Exchange Commission's commissioner over laws of security industry)
April 17, 2006... When a federal appellate court dealt its latest blow to the Securities and Exchange Commission's fund governance rule (see front page), there was at least one celebrant in a most unlikely place: Paul S. Atkins, Republican SEC commissioner and...

For The Record.(interview introduction)(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... The introduction to an interview in the Securities Industry News special report on information security (April 10, page 16) included some outdated titles of Donald F. Donahue that were incorrectly listed on the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp....

Is Wall Street Heading for Another Paperwork Crisis?(it had not invested in the crucial back-office infrastructure needed to process the increasing volume of stocks)
April 17, 2006... Nearly four decades ago, as American astronauts were preparing to land on the moon and the stock market was booming, investors were shocked to discover that Wall Street had to shut its doors one day a week so its back offices could try to catch...

NYSE Reformats Bond Data Display: Big Board's latest step in effort to grow as retail fixed-income venue.(New York Stock Exchange)(the Automated Bond System (ABS). )
April 17, 2006... In the latest in a planned series of enhancements to its bond-trading transparency and functionality, the New York Stock Exchange has revamped the fixed-income data display on its Web site, which it culls from trades executed over its...

With JP Morgan Deal, BNY Signals Commitment to Trust.(Bank of New York Co.)(BNY decision to swap its 338-branch retail banking business for JP Morgan Chase & Co.'s corporate trust business )
April 17, 2006... Bank of New York Co.'s (BNY) decision to swap its 338-branch retail banking business for JP Morgan Chase & Co.'s corporate trust business is evidence of further consolidation in a scale-intensive business that is moving in a new direction. ...

Atkins on SROs and NMS.(Paul S. Atkins)(self-regulatory organizations)(National Market System)
April 17, 2006... When Paul S. Atkins, commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission, addressed the Securities Industry Institute at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School on March 6, the SEC had just come off a flurry of activity that included...

Outsourcing Patriot Act Compliance: Buyers Beware.(Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001)
April 17, 2006... Banks and broker-dealers can pay others to take on the messy task of building a customer identification program (CIP), one of the compliance burdens they gained from the post-9-11 USA Patriot Act and related rules. In the bargain, it becomes...

CBOE's VIX Product Capitalizes on Name Recognition.(Chicago Board Options Exchange Inc.)
April 17, 2006... When the Chicago Board Options Exchange inaugurated trading in options on the exchange's Volatility Index (VIX) on Feb. 24, nearly 10,000 contracts traded on the first day. It seemed an auspicious enough start for a product that by definition...

Deadline Extended on Contentious Patriot Act Provision.
April 17, 2006... The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), heeding concerns raised by the financial industry, has extended from April 2 to July 5 the date for compliance with Section 312 of the USA Patriot Act. The final...

Euroclear's Merere: Into the EC Regulatory Breach.(cross-border clearing and settlement)(European Commission)(Interview)
April 17, 2006... Investors and financial institutions in Europe have long been griping about the high costs of cross-border clearing and settlement. Now the European Union authorities are joining the chorus--and they have the power to make a difference. ...

Euronext.liffe Migrating From Sun Solaris to Linux-Intel.(Change of operating system)
April 17, 2006... The Euronext.liffe derivatives market is moving to an open computing architecture, replacing Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system, which has powered the core trading platform since 1998, with a Linux operating system running on Intel...

CME Offers Electronic Trading Incentive for Eurodollars.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
April 17, 2006... To give electronic trading of its Eurodollar options a boost, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has launched an incentive program for members and lessees who trade the products on the CME Globex electronic trading platform. The program of...

ISE Announces Equities Exchange; Liquidnet Names Liquidity Partners.(International Securities Exchange)
April 24, 2006... In the late 1990s, when David Krell, William Porter, Marty Averbuch and Gary Katz were laying plans for the first electronic options exchange in the U.S., they named their Wall Street-based venture International Securities Exchange. Last...

Despite Clouds, Commission Recapture Keeps Allure.(practise of payment through soft dollar and commission recapture)
April 24, 2006... For all the controversy surrounding soft-dollar compensation for brokerage services, it and the related practice of commission recapture are proving resilient in the face of regulatory scrutiny. "Soft dollars and bundling will be with us to...

Coming Crackdown on Compression Has Customers of ECNs Crying Foul.(Electronic Communications Networks)(clearing and settlement costs)
April 24, 2006... The securities processing industry is beginning to come to grips with a proposed rule that threatens to crimp if not permanently damage some of the high-volume equities trading practices that have evolved in the era of electronic communications...

Moving Toward Multifactor.(identity authentication methods, ownership of Gain capital Inc.)
April 24, 2006... Commercial banks and other depository institutions are quickly adopting multifactor authentication techniques to improve upon the conventional log-on-and-password method of verifying online customer identities. Will the securities industry be...

People In The News.(employees and management of Xpress Holdings)
April 24, 2006... Chicago-based optionsXpress Holdings, the fast-growing online brokerage that went public last year and has been capitalizing on retail investor interest in equity options, has bolstered its management team with two senior appointments from...

The Hybrid Model Is Here To Stay--for Now.(online securities trading)
April 24, 2006... Traditional exchanges and their members are being dragged into the 21st century by several inexorable forces: the search for pools of liquidity, enhanced price discovery, low-cost and instantaneous execution, and securities regulators'...

Panopticon Unveils Explorer.(Panopticon Software)
April 24, 2006... Panopticon Software, a Stockholm-based supplier of real-time visualization tools for financial markets, recently launched Panopticon Explorer, a product that brings groundbreaking business intelligence software to the desktop. Explorer takes...

Enforcement, British Style.(U.K.'s Financial Services Authority )
April 24, 2006... The accelerating pace of consolidation and globalization in financial markets is challenging regulators at least as much as the entities they regulate--and forcing officials from multiple jurisdictions to discuss their concerns and priorities...

Stream Processing Developer Says Speed Has Tripled.(StreamBase 3.0 version )(Company overview)
April 24, 2006... Making the latest bid to stay ahead of the securities industry's drive to ever-faster data-handling rates and ultra-low latency delays, StreamBase Systems announced general availability last week of the 3.0 version of its stream processing...

GigaSpaces in Sun Initiative and Endorsed by BofA.(Bank of America)(Next Generation Trading (NGT) initiative)
April 24, 2006... GigaSpaces Technologies, a developer of infrastructure software tailored to high-frequency, low-latency transactional and analytical functions in finance and other industries, has been designated a strategic middleware platform within Sun...

Canadian Depository Revamps Corporate Actions.(Canadian Depository for Securities is undertaking a series of projects to improve the capture and delivery of corporate announcements )
April 24, 2006... Reflecting the growing importance of automating corporate actions, Canada's central securities depository is undertaking a series of projects to improve the capture and delivery of corporate announcements to its members and non-member clients....

Nyfix and Swift Seek Regional Boost for FIX Protocol.(Swift network)
April 24, 2006... Aiming to increase penetration of the FIX messaging protocol in the Asia-Pacific region, the Swift network announced a partnership agreement last week to offer the Appia FIX engine of Stamford, Conn.-based Nyfix at a discount to participants in...

Multi-Asset-Class Trading: How Close Is This Holy Grail?(online trading of securities)
April 24, 2006... Thanks to a confluence of advances in electronic trading tools and infrastructures, combined with changes in investment practices led by envelope-pushing hedge funds and proprietary trading desks, multi-asset-class trading has gone from theory...

The Arms Race: Broker-Dealers' Pursuit of E-trading Supremacy.(upgradation of online trading technology)
April 24, 2006... The competition in electronic trading technology, which has all the trappings of an ever-escalating arms race, shows no sign of letting up. Wall Street's bulge-bracket firms have never been reluctant to throw people and money at the fastest and...

Tradeware's Schwartz: Technology Is Ready for Global Execution.(Howard J. Schwartz)(Interview)
April 24, 2006... In the late 1990s and early 2000s, while virtually all major stock exchanges and brokerage firms were developing strategies and systems to enable cross-border securities trading at faster speeds and lower costs than had previously been...

Evidence Mounts That Cross-Border E-trading Is for Real.(cross-border mergers and acquisitions of stock exchanges )
April 24, 2006... For a year or two on either side of the market crash in 2000, cross-border stock trading was all the rage. In retrospect it was more talk than action, but on the assumption that investor demand for automated transactions was about to explode on...

Japan Opens Up to Foreign Technologies: Automated trading and related needs spur IT imports.
April 24, 2006... As the forces of automated and algorithmic trading spread to Japan, the country's brokerage industry is throwing off its historical insularity and investing in technologies invented elsewhere, principally the U.S., where advanced trading and...

Algorithmic Trading Tightens Buy- and Sell-Side Bonds.
April 24, 2006... The once-radical notion of algorithmic trading is settling in. Buy-side traders are gaining in skill and familiarity with algorithms, trusting and depending on them more and applying them to increasingly complex strategies. "I don't think we're...