Securities Industry News articles from April 2007

Securities Industry News archives from April 2007

A Trading-Floor Technology Vision.
April 2, 2007... As trading floors get bigger and more complex, they will be guided by a new mantra: intelligent communications. Characterized by emerging "global campus" architectures, trading floors such as one being built by Royal Bank of Scotland in...

Portfolio Margining Approvals Issued.
April 2, 2007... Broker-dealers that were gearing up to offer portfolio margining accounts starting today have been getting the necessary approval letters that reflect U.S. regulators' evolving approach to rulemaking in an increasingly global financial services...

MiFID's Scope Still Sparks Controversy: Implementation details, application to non-equities debated.
April 2, 2007... The much-anticipated implementation of the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) is seven months away, yet debate continues to rage over how some of its provisions applying to equities should be implemented and...

ICE and TSX in Clearing Alliance.
April 2, 2007... For the second time within a month, the Toronto Stock Exchange's parent, TSX Group, has formed a strategic alliance with a U.S. electronic exchange. Following up its March 5 disclosure of a joint venture with New York's International Securities...

AML Exams: Brokers Beware.
April 2, 2007... Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission began to conduct broker-dealer examinations under provisions of the USA Patriot Act. One of the things they have been--and will be--looking for is how well anti-money-laundering (AML) rules are...

RBS's King-size Complex.(Royal Bank of Scotland PLC)
April 2, 2007... UBS is a standout not just for its position as the world's eighth-largest bank by market capitalization. It also operates the world's largest trading floor--the size of two football fields--in its headquarters on Washington Boulevard in...

Icap's E-profits.(Financial report)(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... Icap's financial year ended Friday, and in a "pre-close trading statement" ahead of results to be released on May 23, the London-based interdealer brokerage pointed to electronic trading and technology as major factors in both revenue and...

Singapore Snag.(Singapore Exchange Ltd. faces problems in Securities Order Processing System )(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... Investors couldn't get access to one of the Singapore Exchange (SGX) electronic trading systems for 75 minutes in the morning of March 27. The failure was traced to a group of Singapore Exchange Securities Order Processing System terminals, the...

Finetix Unveils Firm.(Finetix Investor Relationship Management)(Brief article)
April 2, 2007... IT consulting firm Finetix has teamed up with San Francisco-based Salesforce.com, and released a new software application specifically to help asset and wealth managers better manage their client communications. Called Finetix Investor...

FlexTrade-FXMarketSpace.
April 2, 2007... Execution management systems company FlexTrade Systems said March 29 that it was offering clients direct access to FXMarketSpace, the centrally cleared market for over-the-counter foreign exchange trading that co-owners Chicago Mercantile...

Lackritz Leads Alone.
April 2, 2007... Effective in about two weeks, Marc Lackritz will be the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association's (Sifma) sole CEO. Lackritz, the longtime chief executive of the Securities Industry Association (SIA), and Micah Green, his...

Independent Chair Rule Won't Fade Quietly.
April 2, 2007... March 2 marked the end of the Securities and Exchange Commission's latest comment period in its ongoing consideration of the controversial independent chair rule, a key part of the mutual fund reform package that first came before the...

Where Short-Selling Came Up Short.
April 2, 2007... On March 14, the Securities and Exchange Commission and NYSE Regulation, the New York Stock Exchange self-regulatory body, announced settlements of their separate enforcement proceedings against units of Goldman Sachs Group for short sales of...

Platform and Gaselys: Energy Trading on the Grid.
April 2, 2007... Paris-based Gaselys is the first energy trading firm to adopt grid computing in the form of Platform Computing's Symphony technology. The implementation is being announced today but has been in place several months and has already proven its...

Cover Payments Raise Money-Laundering Concerns: Solution to ID issue requires messaging enhancements, global response.
April 2, 2007... A common part of the global payments system, known as cover payments, is increasingly drawing attention as an opening for money-laundering opportunities. These payments can mask some of the parties that send and receive funds transfers...

HSBC Turns to CheckFree for Corporate Actions.
April 2, 2007... Global banking giant HSBC's securities services unit is the latest to automate the processing of corporate action events through the phased installation of CheckFree Corp.'s eVent software. The bank is relying on eVent to scrub the...

Euronext Technology Arm Looks East: Joint venture with Atos Origin pursues markets from Iran to Indonesia.
April 2, 2007... Atos Euronext Market Solutions (AEMS) has been expanding its Asia presence this year, opening an office in the Dubai International Financial Center last month and saying it will form an information technology joint venture with Kuala Lumpur's...

Man Financial Is Latest Big Name Captured by Shadow Financial.(Shadow Financial Services Corp.)
April 2, 2007... Slowly but surely, Shadow Financial Services Corp. is building up its list of top-tier, technology-savvy brokerage-company clients. Last week, the Edison, N.J. company said that Man Financial, the brokerage arm of London-based hedge fund...

SunGard Signs Albert Fried in a Sign That Its Acquisition Strategy Is Working.
April 2, 2007... SunGard Data Systems has pulled institutional broker-dealer Albert Fried & Co. into a multifaceted relationship, facilitated by Wayne, Pa.-based SunGard's string of acquisitions that resulted in an integrated approach to addressing the...

As SRO Merger Advances, So Does Lawsuit to Block It.
April 9, 2007... With the consolidation of self-regulatory organizations (SROs) NASD and NYSE Regulation proceeding toward final approval, document discovery is also moving forward in a class-action lawsuit seeking to block the merger. The consolidation...

Change Sweeps Swift's Top Ranks: Securities chief Donovan leaves; departing CEO Schrank sanguine.
April 9, 2007... Swift, the global banking and securities industry communications network, has another executive search on its hands. Last Monday, exactly six weeks after announcing that banking industry division head Lazaro Campos would succeed Leonard Schrank...

Data Technology Companies in Buyout Deals: Interactive Data Corp. Buys Unit of Xcitek For Corporate Actions.(Company overview)
April 9, 2007... In a move to bolster its already broad array of financial market data and analytics, Interactive Data Corp. has agreed buy the assets of the data division of corporate actions vendor Xcitek for $25.3 million in cash. Xcitek is considered...

Data Technology Companies in Buyout Deals:Asset Control Attracts Capital From Fidelity Ventures, Replaces CEO and Acquires Microsoft Partner TAP.
April 9, 2007... Data management systems company Asset Control announced a series of strategic moves last week that were fueled by an infusion of capital from Fidelity Ventures, a firm closely tied to mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments of Boston. Now Asset...

Network Vendors Adapt to an Algorithmic World: Collocation services shorten the distance between traders and markets.
April 9, 2007... The rapid growth of algorithmic and black-box trading has been accompanied by a surge in market-data volume and demands from traders for ever-lower data latency, measured in milliseconds and even microseconds. It's causing network providers to...

ISE's Katz in the Wings.(briefs )(Gary Katz appointed at International Securities Exchange)
April 9, 2007... International Securities Exchange (ISE) announced that David Krell will step aside as president and CEO as of Jan. 1. His successor will be COO Gary Katz, with whom Krell, his former boss in the New York Stock Exchange's options business, and...

Broadridge Off and Running.(dialogue with Richard Daly of Broadridge Financial Solutions)(Interview)
April 9, 2007... Automatic Data Processing's (ADP) brokerage services division spin-off, Broadridge Financial Solutions, will be focusing on expanding its product and service offerings to broker-dealers, says CEO Richard Daly. As an independent entity,...

Cost-Basis Conundrums.
April 9, 2007... Tax reporting of securities transaction cost-basis information has become a major issue in the financial services industry and the political arena. It heated up last year and again came into focus in February with the release of the president's...

Technology: Microsoft in Hedge-Fund-Focused Alliance.
April 9, 2007... Paladyne Systems and Microsoft Corp. said last week that they have teamed up to jointly market and promote Paladyne's hedge fund products, which rely on Microsoft technology. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Paladyne will have access...

Extranets Find Fertile Ground in U.K.
April 9, 2007... The London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the fledgling consortium known as Boat, which was set up last September to challenge the LSE in data collection and trade reporting, have made technology decisions indicating that business opportunities are...

Decision Delayed on Short-Selling Proposal: Data on delivery failures leads SEC to reopen comment period.
April 9, 2007... Six months after requesting comments on a proposed amendment to Regulation SHO, the Securities and Exchange Commission reopened the process March 26 following an analysis by NASD showing that failures to deliver (FTDs) stock in short-sale...

Advent Software Finds New Momentum: CEO's long view, hedge fund demands solidify turnaround.(Company overview)
April 16, 2007... Though it always maintained its leading position as a provider of software and services to the investment management industry, including the burgeoning hedge fund segment, Advent Software hit a rough patch in the early 2000s, and its reputation...

Salesforce.com Aims to Replicate Merrill Lynch Deal.
April 16, 2007... Financial services giant Merrill Lynch & Co. deliberated and weighed options for months as it looked for a new way to help 25,000 geographically dispersed investment advisers better manage their customer communications, contact data and work...

A New Look at AML Look-Backs.(investigation of financial transactions to ensure compliance with anti-money-laundering laws)
April 16, 2007... The shifting landscape for anti-money-laundering (AML) compliance has come to include look-backs, or investigations of past transactions, as a more visible part of the process. Because this happens after an enforcement action, financial firms...

In ECNs, Fees and Rebates Galore.
April 16, 2007... As alternative or dark-book trading systems have been sprouting like tulips in the spring, now numbering more than 40, the public quote-displaying electronic communications networks (ECNs) and regional exchanges such as BATS Trading of Kansas...

Nasdaq Deal Talk Puts Spotlight on PHLX and OMX.
April 16, 2007... Two months after it came up empty in its attempt to acquire the London Stock Exchange (LSE), the Nasdaq Stock Market has entered into either merger or cooperation discussions with the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) and OMX Group of...

$50 Million for JonesTrading.
April 16, 2007... Agency brokerage JonesTrading Institutional Services, which provides block-trading services in U.S. and Canadian securities, said it has received a $50 million equity investment from private equity fund Friedman Fleischer & Lowe of San...

$9 Million for ITP.(Integrated Trade Processing)(Brief article)
April 16, 2007... Integrated Trade Processing (ITP) of New York has closed a $9 million, series D round of financing led by merchant banking firm Grail Partners, which invests in and provides transaction advice to the investment management industry. ITP, founded...

People In The News.
April 16, 2007... Cantor Fitzgerald trading technology affiliate eSpeed has brought in BNP Paribas and Morgan Stanley veteran Mark Ficke as senior managing director of fixed-income electronic brokerage. Referring to Ficke's more than 20 years in fixed-income...

Central Clearing for the FX Market.
April 16, 2007... Less than a year after first being announced, FXMarketSpace--a joint venture of Reuters and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)--went live on March 26, with a good amount of fanfare. Because FXMarketSpace is the first centrally cleared,...

The Future of Regulation, With a Clean Slate.
April 16, 2007... In last week's Securities Industry News, the Original Sources section carried texts of speeches by Richard Ketchum, CEO of self-regulatory organization (SRO) NYSE Regulation, and Securities and Exchange Commission member Annette Nazareth at a...

European Settlement: Dinne Looks Back and Forward.
April 16, 2007... When Martine Dinne steps down in June as chief executive officer of Euroclear Bank after holding the title since 2005, she will have spent 38 years at the Brussels-based international central securities depository (ICSD). Dinne was witness...

Signs of a Web 2.0 Takeoff: Some securities firms seeking early-mover advantage.
April 16, 2007... Social networks, blogs, podcasts and other highly interactive applications that are part of the Web 2.0 wave are having a major impact on technology strategies across the corporate world and are showing signs of becoming the next big, bona fide...

Commission Management Vendor Automates Recalls: Cogent Consulting claims a big client for its securities-loan technology.
April 16, 2007... Automation in the securities finance market has taken a step forward with an offering from commission management software vendor Cogent Consulting for keeping track of securities recall transactions. The Summit, N.J. firm says that it has...

Latest Pyxis Version Adds Insurance and Content Options.
April 16, 2007... With the release of the 5.2 version of its financial institution enterprise software for wireless devices, Pyxis Mobile has introduced mAdvisor for Insurance, which extends to insurance agents the sales, client service and data management...

Brokers Pick Up Speed With Intelligent Notification: Systems can reach large numbers of contacts but need fine-tuning.
April 16, 2007... In an effort to open lines of communication to employees and clients more quickly, brokerages are adopting intelligent notification systems that can reach hundreds of contacts at the touch of a button. Brokerages can use the notification...

How Dow Jones Now Plays in the Algo Trading League: Data, wealth management among priorities of Hart's enterprise media group.(Company overview)
April 23, 2007... Suppliers of data and technology to the securities industry are scrambling to meet customer demands for more information ever faster. Dow Jones & Co. is in both those categories, and if Clare Hart has any say in the matter, its technology...

Competitiveness Move: Japan Looks to Merge TSE, 3 Other Markets.
April 23, 2007... Members of Japan's Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, the country's top economic policy body headed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, met last week to discuss combining four exchanges to make the country's markets more competitive...

Royalblue-LatentZero Deal Speeds OMS Consolidation and Integration With EMS.(Company overview)
April 23, 2007... Royalblue's acquisition of LatentZero, announced last week, will be the latest consolidation step in order management and trade execution systems while blurring the historic demarcation between the two. It comes in the wake of New York-based...

Turquoise Taps DTCC And Citigroup Unit for Processing Services.(Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s subsidy European Central Counterparty Ltd.)
April 23, 2007... Turquoise, a group of seven financial institutions developing a pan-European alternative trading system (ATS), has tapped Euro-CCP, a subsidiary of the U.S. Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC), to provide clearing services. In turn,...

Accommodating Algorithms, Dark Books Diversify Buy-Side Execution Choices.
April 23, 2007... Seeking to allow institutional investors to take advantage of a broader variety of order flow, Pipeline Trading Systems is offering the ability to execute portions of large block trades in the broader market using algorithms while the bulk of...

Clearstream Launches Fund Settlement System in Luxembourg.(Clearstream International's central facility for funds)
April 23, 2007... Clearstream International, one of Europe's two biggest international depositories, is improving its settlement process for investment funds through the phased introduction of its Central Facility for Funds (CFF) that it says will allow transfer...

Cusip Launches Free ID Lookup Service: International pressure prompts flexible pricing response.
April 23, 2007... Responding to calls from European clients for more free access to identification codes for North American securities, the Cusip Service Bureau (CSB) has launched a Cusip-ISIN lookup service for more than 3.6 million securities and their...

Deriv-Serv Momentum.
April 23, 2007... Noting the progress in accelerating credit default swap (CDS) confirmations as that market has grown apace (graph above), Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s (DTCC) Deriv-Serv reaffirmed its positioning last week as "the only platform used by...

SEC Needs to Reboot.
April 23, 2007... The Securities and Exchange Commission is still suffering from flawed information technology management, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. In the latest in a series of critiques of the agency's IT...

People In The News.(Platform Computing has appointed VPs Jim Mancuso and Charles Jarvis)(James E. Hartley joins A-Team Group)(Cantor Fitzgerald L.P. rejects Tullett Prebon takeover and promotes Paul M. Pion)
April 23, 2007... Seeking to strengthen the global leadership position it asserts in grid computing systems for the financial industry, Platform Computing has appointed VPs Jim Mancuso and Charles Jarvis to focus on the sector. It's part of a vertical-industry...

Globalization's Trickle-Down Effect.
April 23, 2007... Over the last few decades, we have seen significant change in the securities industry, much of it benefiting the retail investor: better access to execution venues, market data and analytics, more products, lower prices. But this is only the...

How Far Online Investing Has Come.
April 23, 2007... It was 1997. Florida beat Cleveland in the World Series, Harry Potter was not yet a household name and Y2K was barely a gleam in programmers' eyes. That was also the year my firm, Corporate Insight, began tracking the online brokerage world...

Axes Global Execution System Reaches 250 Markets.
April 23, 2007... Carving a middle ground between the biggest, high-touch Wall Street firms and fully electronic direct-market access (DMA) providers, Auerbach Grayson & Co. offshoot Axes launched its Global Execution Management System (Gems) on April 16....

Shanghai Gets Ready for Chinese Version of FIX.
April 23, 2007... After five years of development, the securities trading exchange protocol (Step), China's answer to the FIX protocol, is ready for implementation by the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) in the new trading system it expects to release this fall....

SunGard Puts Financial Businesses in Two Divisions.(Company overview)
April 23, 2007... Two years since it agreed to go private in an $11 billion deal led by Silicon Valley's Silver Lake Partners, SunGard Data Systems has reorganized its financial systems business around industry sectors, with two divisions each headed by a chief...

Former Thomson Exec Eccleston Joins IMTrader as CEO.
April 23, 2007... Pivot Solutions, a developer of trading systems based on instant messaging (IM) technology, announced the appointment last week of Louis Eccleston as chairman and chief executive officer, replacing the company's founder, Furqan Nazeeri. ...

Icap Introduces E-securities Lending: Interdealer giant's BrokerTec serves as tech platform.
April 30, 2007... Interdealer brokerage Icap's recent entry into securities lending through an electronic trading platform adds a new competitive wrinkle to this growing and increasingly automated, multitrillion-dollar marketplace. Once an arcane...

Clarification and Conflict in AML Regulations: FinCEN-CFTC Joint Policy.(Correction notice)
April 30, 2007... Addresses Futures Give-ups Rules proposed in 2003 for customer identification in give-up derivatives transactions have become final with the publication of joint guidance from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the...

Clarification and Conflict in AML Regulations: Where Data Demands Meet Privacy Safeguards,Financial Institutions Get Caught in the Middle.(Correction notice)
April 30, 2007... Banks and broker-dealers are caught in the middle of dueling regulatory mandates when it comes to customer data: the demand for increasing amounts of that data to comply with anti-money-laundering (AML) requirements, and privacy concerns that...

Mutual Fund Governance Effort Turns Into a Regulatory Marathon.
April 30, 2007... Just when many observers of the securities regulation scene were assuming that the Securities and Exchange Commission would allow controversial mutual fund governance rules to die a quiet death, commission chairman Christopher Cox has stated...

Options Expensing Spurs Technology Demand.
April 30, 2007... If there is a silver lining to the still-simmering options backdating scandal, it may be for the software companies encountering brisk demand for solutions to speed compliance with complicated new accounting requirements. For public...

China Signs On to Multilateral Iosco Regulatory Principles: Endorsement of enforcement protocol is a move into the global mainstream.(International Organization of Securities Commissions)
April 30, 2007... China joined the International Organization of Securities Commissions' (Iosco) multilateral memorandum of understanding (MMOU) this month, a sign that the country has made significant progress in battling money laundering and other...

Compression Rule Lingers.
April 30, 2007... The National Securities Clearing Corp. (NSCC) proposal to eliminate trade compression sits, seemingly dormant, within the Securities and Exchange Commission staff. But it's not off the table. Filed April 28, 2006, the proposal would eliminate...

TransactTools' Coming Out.
April 30, 2007... NYSE Euronext last week officially rolled out NYSE TransactTools, the amalgam of its FIX vendor acquisition TransactTools with two parts of its Securities Industry Automation Corp. subsidiary, Sector and SFTI. The latter is the Sector-developed...

Jefferies Realigns Trading, Commits Capital.
April 30, 2007... Culminating a 15-month effort to staff up and gear up for a full-service, sector-centric trading operation, historically agency-oriented brokerage Jefferies & Co. announced a new head of U.S. cash equities trading and other changes under equity...

People In The News.
April 30, 2007... State Street Corp. in Boston has strengthened its derivative processing capabilities with senior-level appointments from Mellon Financial Corp.'s Eagle Investment Systems subsidiary and from Citigroup. Kevin Sullivan, who co-founded...

Financial Industrial Policy.
April 30, 2007... When Western economies had gone distressingly soft in the 1970s and early 1980s, "Japan Inc." became shorthand for the most feared, emerging business power of the day. In the West, a strain of political and economic thinking had grown up around...

Accounting as Globalization Test.
April 30, 2007... The securities industry is buzzing with talk of markets globalizing and the uncertain or unintended consequences of the trend. One critical forum for these discussions, particularly as they relate to regulatory policy, is the International...

As Dark Pools Spread, Even the Experts Raise Questions: Order options arise to meet varied needs, but they add to complexity.
April 30, 2007... The prospect of searching out liquidity-even if it's just talk-seems to automatically attract a crowd these days. When TradingScreen, a leading execution management system provider, organized a panel discussion on the rapid rise of dark pools...

Merrin and Pitt Ponder Market Structure and Regulators' Response.
April 30, 2007... Just as quickly as the population of alternative trading systems (ATSs) ballooned past 40, a shakeout could result in a fraction of that number surviving within a year's time. That and other projections-including the further opening of ATSs to...

Caution's the Word on Derivatives.
April 30, 2007... The size of and attention to derivatives markets has made the International Swaps & Derivatives Association's (ISDA) annual conference a major gathering place for heavyweights in the field, traders and regulators alike. With ISDA announcing at...

Reuters Adds Yahoo to Its Instant Messaging Platform.
April 30, 2007... With the launch this month of Reuters Messaging 6.0, instant messaging (IM) over the Reuters Group trading network is extended to the Yahoo system, which is a particularly common way of communicating among energy traders. Including Yahoo...

Trading Technologies Opens Singapore Exchange Gateway: Regional headquarters, network hub signal commitment to Asia.(Trading Technologies International)
April 30, 2007... Strengthening its Southeast Asian base, Trading Technologies International (TT) announced multiple initiatives centered in Singapore, including the opening of a regional headquarters and a direct gateway connection to the Singapore Exchange...

Putting an E' in Reconciliation: Automation hasn't fixed all exceptions, but the urgency persists.
April 30, 2007... Despite the significant operational strides that the securities industry has made since the days when trades were done on paper, a small but significant number of exception transactions still cause inordinate headaches. Automated systems have...

Europe Begins to Close STP Gap: The back-end repercussions of electronic trading and MiFID provisions.(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive)(Straight Through Processing)
April 30, 2007... Europe was ahead of North America when it came to all-electronic equities trading, but in post-trade processing, the roles were reversed. "There are still systemic problems in Europe, including the high cost of clearing and settlement," said...

Omgeo's Brown Takes Stock: Six months into CEO role, back-office veteran connecting global dots.(Company overview)
April 30, 2007... Omgeo was born six years ago, a fusion of global transaction management and communications businesses owned by its two parent companies, Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) and Thomson Financial. At the time, much of the securities world...

Two Bond Platforms, Two Approaches: TradeWeb more vocal on STP than MarketAxess; both anticipate growth.
April 30, 2007... As electronic trading in the bond markets has advanced, so have demands for straight-through processing (STP) services. Although the debt markets are not as far along as equities in achieving STP, a good idea of the state of post-trade...