Securities Industry News articles from February 2003

Securities Industry News archives from February 2003

Unequal Burden: Nasdaq says other marts must carry more reg costs.
February 3, 2003... Amid the increasing fragmentation of its own market, Nasdaq is seeking the Securities and Exchange Commission's support for other marketplaces trading Nasdaq stocks to carry a greater share of market surveillance costs. Nasdaq-which has...

SEC wants to end Options Pay Plans.
February 3, 2003... Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt, who is about to step down as the top equities regulator, last week sent letters to the five U.S. options exchanges urging the elimination of exchange-sponsored plans that encourage...

Nymex, Nybot in Common Ops Talks.(New York Mercantile Exchange, New York Board of Trade in discussions)
February 3, 2003... Discussions are under way between the New York Mercantile Exchange and the New York Board of Trade on whether and how Nymex can take over Nybot's clearing processing work, Nymex officials confirmed last week. "There are business issues to...

Crisis Control Controversy: BMA balks as MSRB, SEC team to define muni market emergency process.(Bond Market Association to oppose Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board proposal)
February 3, 2003... The Bond Market Association (BMA) will file a comment letter opposing the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's (MSRB's) proposal requesting that the Securities and Exchange Commission bestow binding powers on the MSRB to stop and start...

LSE Re-Enters Market Data Desktop Arena.(London Stock Exchange plans takeover of Proquote)
February 3, 2003... The London Stock Exchange's planned acquisition of Web-based market data provider Proquote-announced last week-has a number of advantages for the exchange, including additional earnings, the ability to control a platform that disseminates its...

Is Linux technology set to Elbow Unix off Wall Street?
February 3, 2003... Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has been seduced by a penguin, the cute little mascot for the open-source Linux operating system, once a favorite of nerds everywhere and now a mainstay in the enterprise as well. In a remarkable development, a...

SunGard-Reuters Dust-Up Revisited.
February 3, 2003... About 18 months ago, SunGard hired three Bridge Trading executives-Mark Minister, who was president and CEO, Jay Indovino, head trader, and Jack Hornberger, managing director of Bridge Transaction Services-prompting a dust-up that resulted in...

Bloomberg, Others Protest NYSE Plan.
February 3, 2003... Bloomberg, Charles Schwab and the Cincinnati Stock Exchange have all filed letters objecting to the New York Stock Exchange's plans to offer a product dubbed Liquidity Quote. According to the plans, NYSE specialists would show quotes of...

FTI Expands Through Alliance With Consultancy.(Financial Technologies International signs deal with London's m.a. partners)
February 3, 2003... New York City-based software vendor Financial Technologies International has inked a deal with London's m.a. partners for marketing and integration services, FTI officials confirmed. The agreement marks one of several deals between the...

Opra Garners Okay for BBO.(Options Price Reporting Authority wins SEC approval for new service)
February 3, 2003... The Options Price Reporting Authority has received permanent approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission for its plan to establish a best bid and offer (BBO) market data service. Opra, which was due to launch the BBO last Friday as...

BMA Wants Trace Exemption' Clause Reinserted.(Bond Market Association)(National Association of Securities Dealers)
February 3, 2003... The Bond Market Association has asked the National Association of Securities Dealers to reinstate an exemption clause for member firms deleted from a proposal filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to increase the number of corporate...

SIA Urges E-Recall Service for Securities Lending.(Securities Industry Association)
February 3, 2003... The Securities Industry Association is recommending standards for automating the recall of securities loans and has called for software vendors to establish electronic recall services, known as ARMs (automated recalls management systems), with...

Singapore Adopts Risk Capital Regs.(Singapore Exchange)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... In line with its new risk-based capital regulations adopted late last year, the Singapore Exchange has changed its membership requirements separating trading and clearing members, thereby reducing their funding requirements. The SGX's...

BNY Launches Automated Collateral Management.(Bank of New York)
February 3, 2003... Expanding its global collateral management services, the Bank of New York said last week that it has rolled out a new service that automatically pools and allocates collateral for its European broker-dealer clients in real time. The...

FXall Upgrades Settlement on E-Trading Platform.
February 3, 2003... FXall has upgraded the Web-based user-interface for its Settlement Center, a tool that allows clients to process foreign exchange trades online. As part of the enhancement, FXall is using Random Walk's Java product, which includes Servlet...

TradeWeb Unveils AccountNet.(instructions database arena, launching its AccountNet service)
February 3, 2003... Fixed-income trading platform TradeWeb today will officially enter the settlement instructions database arena, launching its AccountNet service to compete with Omgeo's Standing Instructions Database (SID) and Alert. The launch of...

Certification lives as fpl eyes bonds.(FIX Protocol Ltd.)
February 3, 2003... Nearly five years after FIX Protocol Ltd. set out to certify FIX messages in the equities space, and just over two years after a company created for that purpose was shut down, FPL is headed down the same road. The difference this time is that...

Custody: the Last Mile for CLS initiative.(CLS Bank)
February 3, 2003... The recent launch of CLS Bank has been a success by any definition, especially compared with the lowered expectations of a year ago. But foreign exchange custody has been slow to be addressed in the continuous-linked settlement initiative, and...

Research Standards converge around xml.
February 3, 2003... The research space has yielded not one, but three XML-based standards that are relevant to the securities industry, an indication of how important moving research data from paper to data tags has become. But in an increasingly challenging...

FpML 4.0 Working Draft Likely Out in February.(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... FpML.org/ISDA, the organization guiding the development of the Financial products Markup Language, began the new year with version FpML 3.0 of the protocol still in the trial recommendation phase, with 4.0 headed that way. "Version 4.0...

Access International Joins MDDL Steering Committee.(market data definition language)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... Denver-based reference data vendor Access International has been added to the MDDL steering committee. MDDL, the market data definition language, is an XML-based messaging protocol for market information and is being developed by the Financial...

Shareholder.com Releases Version 2.0 of IRXML.(has released version 2.0 of the Investor Relations Mark-up Language)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... Maynard, Mass.-based Shareholder.com has released version 2.0 of the Investor Relations Mark-up Language (IRXML), a Web-based development tool that gives institutional investors and others the ability to develop and host their Web sites for...

Mighter Gissing Unveils Electra.(bond trading gateway)
February 3, 2003... Mighter Gissing, a provider of market data contribution solutions, announced last week the launch of Electra, a bond trading gateway that aggregates interfaces of fixed-income trading systems onto a single screen for customer perusal and...

Caplin Targets Reuters Clients With Mongoose.(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... Caplin Systems is targeting Reuters Group Plc's RTW, TIB and Triarch customers with Mongoose, a browser-based platform for distributing and displaying Reuters international data, which was launched last week in London. The system is being...

Fidelity Enterprise Data Now Fidelity ActionsXchange.(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... Corporate actions vendor Fidelity Enterprise Data Systems has unveiled a new name-Fidelity ActionsXchange. The new name is an attempt to focus on the firm's core competency, corporate actions processing. Last month, the firm completed the...

Waller Makes Return To CheckFree Unit.
February 3, 2003... CheckFree Investment Services, a division of CheckFree Corp., announced last week that Jamie Waller has rejoined the firm from Citigroup Asset Management. Waller spent nearly 20 years at CheckFree before his brief tenure at Citigroup. ...

Nasdaq Ends Quote Update Fees.(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... Nasdaq last week filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission a proposal to eliminate all charges for quotation updates and nondirected and preferenced order cancels. "We believe that eliminating quote update and order cancellation...

Hong Kong Monetary Authority Links to Clearstream.
February 3, 2003... The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which settles Hong Kong corporate and government bonds, has expanded its connectivity with Clearstream by establishing a direct link with the Luxembourg-based international depository. The...

MTS Expands to Spanish Repos.(trade government bond repurchase agreements)
February 3, 2003... MTS, the Italian government bond trading platform, has extended its franchise in Spain to trade government bond repurchase agreements, competing head on with incumbents Senaf and BrokerTec. About 92 Spanish government bonds are already...

Guardian Rolls Out Thomson.(Guardian Insurance & Annuity Co.)(Park Avenue Securities)(Thomson Financial)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2003... The Guardian Insurance & Annuity Co. (GIAC) and its broker-dealer subsidiary, Park Avenue Securities, have selected Thomson Financial's Web-based Advisor One desktop for wealth management services. The companies rolled the product out to 500...

Nasdaq: SuperMontage Stemmed Share Decline.(SuperMontage has helped Nasdaq curtail a drop in its market share)
February 10, 2003... SuperMontage has helped Nasdaq curtail a drop in its market share, which stabilized at 19.9 percent of overall trading volume in early December when the new trading system completed its rollout, the electronic market said last week. The...

SunGard, Algorithmics in Suit.(proprietary information)
February 10, 2003... U.S. software giant SunGard Data Systems and its rival Algorithmics in Toronto are duking it out over proprietary information each claims the other firm obtained from former employees. Last Thursday, SunGard responded to an injunction...

Virt-x: End of Cross-Border Dream?(Swiss stock exchange SWX's takeover of Virt-x last Monday has sparked a debate)
February 10, 2003... Swiss stock exchange SWX's takeover of Virt-x last Monday has sparked a debate as to whether it represents the end of the ideal of a single pan-European securities trading platform, or whether it is simply a symptom of the current bear market....

Reuters Looks to Shift Development to Asia.
February 10, 2003... Reuters is joining the growing number of companies looking to send more development-related work offshore. The vendor is planning to move the integration and testing of its 3000 Xtra desktop to Bangkok, Thailand, and may in the future migrate...

MSRB Draws Fire: But SEC defends group's filing for trade-halt power.(Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board)
February 10, 2003... Securities and Exchange Commission officials defended the premise behind the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's (MSRB's) filing for emergency trade-halt authority for munis without endorsing or commenting on the specifics of the plan last...

Depositories' Reach Spawns Regulatory Challenge.
February 10, 2003... Just what defines a central securities depository and how should it be regulated were the key issues hotly debated at a gathering of post-trade processing executives in London last week. While speakers and delegates at the IBC-sponsored...

European BCP: Market Demand High But Clients' Demands Will Be Higher.(Datamonitor)
February 10, 2003... London-based consultancy Datamonitor last week published a report on the European business-continuity planning /disaster-recovery market that projects that demand for such services will surge in the coming years. However, in the following...

FIX Vendor Seeks Healthier Sector.
February 10, 2003... Lost in the financial IT shake-out following the dot-com crash was a curious product addition for FIX vendor Innovision, based in Lenexa, Kansas. Long known as a FIXML pioneer, Innovision moved into the health care field a year ago with...

Report: Market Data to Evolve.(Technology)(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... As market data becomes more of a commodity, providers will increasingly look to add value, and one strategy they may use is to subaggregate data to make it easier to build analytics, according to Jin-Chul (Gene) Williams, author of a Financial...

Radianz, Syntegra in Talks to Partner on Crest Link.
February 10, 2003... Network providers Radianz and Syntegra are in discussions to offer a combined service to link financial firms to U.K. central depository Crest, which would leverage Radianz's network with Syntegra's settlement messaging, said industry sources....

MGEX Turns to Rolfe & Nolan to Broaden E-Access.(Minneapolis Grain Exchange)
February 10, 2003... As electronic trading continues to make inroads, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGEX) is adopting Rolfe & Nolan's front-end applications to provide commodities traders with greater access to its MGEXpress electronic platform. MGEXpress,...

New Trading Platform for Swaps Set for Rollout in May.(Gottex)(Gottex)
February 10, 2003... Swapstream, a new electronic trading platform for European interest-rate swaps part-owned by Swiss voice broker Gottex, is set to go live in London in May. Swapstream, if successful, would be one of the few automated trading systems for...

Bank of Greece, MTS Battle Over Government Debt.(Rejecting a deal to team up with Italy's electronic government bond trading platform MTS)
February 10, 2003... Rejecting a deal to team up with Italy's electronic government bond trading platform MTS, the Bank of Greece will release a new version of its trading system for Greek government debt to the consternation of its local primary dealers as well as...

Philadelphia Seeks Rebates in Options Markets.(Philadelphia Stock Exchange)
February 10, 2003... The Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) has petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission not to preclude options exchanges from offering liquidity rebates and sharing market data revenue with their members. The PHLX's proposal was...

Lava Sues Sonic Over Patent.(Lava Trading)(Sonic Trading)
February 10, 2003... Lava Trading, the financial technology firm that developed direct-access trading for the sell side, is suing Sonic Trading, a direct-access broker and rival trading solutions provider, over alleged patent infringement. "The patented...

Two Key Discounters Sour on Overseas Markets.(Toronto-Dominion Bank, parent company of industry giant TD Waterhouse)(Charles Schwab)
February 10, 2003... In separate but telling moves, two of the world's largest discount brokerages have signaled their frustration with moribund overseas markets. Last week, the chairman of Toronto-Dominion Bank, parent company of industry giant TD Waterhouse,...

Dain Taps EMC Centera as Vendor Targets E-Mail.(RBC Dain Rauscher, a U.S. broker-dealer subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada)
February 10, 2003... RBC Dain Rauscher, a U.S. broker-dealer subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada, has purchased 15 terabytes of EMC Centera content addressed storage (CAS) to replace its current optical storage media for its e-mail archives. Other Centera...

Regulators Get Tough on e-Doc Retention.(seek swift compliance with e-mail archiving rules)
February 10, 2003... Lawyers and regulators are advising firms to seek swift compliance with e-mail archiving rules and to retain "more rather than less," including AOL/Yahoo! instant messaging and similar services provided by vendors like Reuters and Bloomberg,...

Mek Network Adds Trace Data.(Mek Securities L.L.C.)
February 10, 2003... Mek Securities Llc's BondInformationNetwork (BIN) will add Trace corporate pricing data and other "value-added" features in an effort to promote corporate bond and other fixed-income trading to individuals and small investment houses, according...

Equitec Rolls Out InfoDyne Ticker Plant.(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... Chicago-based Equitec Proprietary Markets, a proprietary trading group, has rolled out a new ticker plant from InfoDyne Corp. that is driven by direct exchange feeds delivered via the Savvis Communications network. Equitec, which...

Nasdaq Liffe, OneChicago Neck and Neck in January.(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... Nasdaq Liffe Markets (NQLX) and OneChicago reported similar volumes in January, the second full month of trading for the two new equity futures markets. The two electronic exchanges, created to trade equity futures and narrow equity index...

DTCC Adds Storage From EMC's Clariion.(Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.)(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., a customer of EMC Corp. for some time, has added several additional EMC Clariion storage systems. Clariion is the vendor's mid-tier storage platform. DTCC has also added Navisphere, which monitors and...

Xaware Unveils RIXML Components for Reporting.
February 10, 2003... XML vendor Xaware has made available a RIXML implementation suite that will help corporate IT groups and software vendors use the XML-based research standard for financial services applications. Xaware said its RIXML suite was recently...

Clearinghouses: Entering A new Golden Age' Amid Radical Upheaval.
February 10, 2003... Despite the dot-com debacle, the winds of revolution are still sweeping through the world's markets, writes Patrick Young in "The New Capital Market Revolution: The Winners, the Losers and the Future of Finance," published by Texere, in the...

Single-Stock Futures: What's Old Is Now New.
February 10, 2003... Single-stock futures (SSFs) were originally traded as long ago as the 17th century in Amsterdam. Their concept is simple: a contract that allows trading in a forward contract based on an individual share. Their core facets are the same as those...

Prebon Taps Integra, Sun for Enhanced Connectivity.
February 10, 2003... Interdealer-broker Prebon Yamane has rolled out London-based Integra SP's iaTrade integration software in its London and New Jersey offices. IaTrade is a framework that ties internal trading systems to both customers and third-party trade...

Sun Focuses on STP, Web Services.(Sun Microsystems)(Brief Article)
February 10, 2003... Sun Microsystems spotlighted a so-called reference architecture for straight-through processing within a typical sell-side investment banking organization at last week's Java on Wall Street conference in New York. The architecture, based...

Norway's Central Depository Ready to Go Public.(Norway's VPS will become the world's first depository to privatize through a public offering next month)
February 10, 2003... Norway's VPS will become the world's first depository to privatize through a public offering next month, in a move that will coincide with its adopting a multibatch settlement system on March 7. "We will change from being self-owned to...

SIA to Continue Cyber-Alerts; Not Replacing FS/ISAC.(Securities Industry Association)
February 10, 2003... The Securities Industry Association will continue to post public warnings of cyber-attacks and threats on the trade group's Web site as soon as such attacks become known, following a first-time posting Jan. 25 warning for the release of the...

Reference Data Group IDs Problems.(securities industry find ways of bridging the discrepancy in identification numbers used to describe securities)
February 10, 2003... A Reuters-led Reference Data User Group (RDUG) will recommend today that the securities industry find ways of bridging the discrepancy in identification numbers used to describe securities from the front to back office and to improve the use of...

Reuters Mulling Instinet's Future.
February 17, 2003... Reuters Group Plc may be willing to consider an offer for its 62-percent stake in Instinet Group as the timing of the leading electronic agency broker's return to profitability remains uncertain, industry sources said. "The word is that if...

Feds: Street's BCP Needs More Work.
February 17, 2003... Congressional investigators advised last week that Wall Street needs to improve its business continuity planning (BCP) regarding trading activity to protect the nation's financial markets from disruption, specifically calling on the Securities...

Thomson Aims to Build Bloomberg Killer.(buys Quant Trading, sell-side trading system)
February 17, 2003... Thomson Financial has acquired Quant Trading, a sell-side trading system that will become the processing and order management side of Thomson Yield One, a new platform slated for a midyear launch. The Yield One platform could potentially do...

Tokyo Slates Debate On Electronic Voting.
February 17, 2003... As corporate governance takes center stage in Japan, the Tokyo Stock Exchange will convene an industry group in April to discuss how to offer an electronic voting service to Japan's institutional investors, exchange officials confirmed last...

Fixing Standards: FIX Protocol moves toward derivatives support.
February 17, 2003... The FIX Protocol Ltd. Global Derivatives Committee continued its reorganization effort on Feb. 6 by detailing its plans to construct a trade data standard for derivatives that is based on FIXML. Also on the horizon is convergence-and perhaps...

After Lamfalussy, A European SEC May Be on the Way.
February 17, 2003... In a paper released last week, Gerard Hertig, a professor at the Swiss Institute of Technology, and Ruben Lee, managing director at Oxford Finance Group and an adviser to European Parliament, predicted that Europe would eventually adopt a...

Big Cities to Gain in BCP Shuffle.
February 17, 2003... Since major industry players first made clear they would decentralize data center operations after 9/11 to mitigate disasters under business continuity plans (BCPs), real estate brokers and chambers of commerce from Delaware to Denver have vied...

France Moves to International ID Numbers in June.
February 17, 2003... France will become the latest European country to move from a domestic securities numbering system to an international 12-digit ISIN code in late June with a Big Bang approach. More than 90,000 equity and fixed-income securities will be...

Ex-Arca Exec Selway to Launch White Cap Broker.(Archipelago Holdings' Jamie Selway)
February 17, 2003... Archipelago Holdings chief economist Jamie Selway has left the ArcaEx exchange to create a new brokerage that would specialize on working large orders. "ArcaEx is going to complete its [Nasdaq stocks] rollout at the end of this quarter. I...

Blackbird's Brickell Nominated.(Bush nominates Mark Brickell to direct Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight)
February 17, 2003... Mark Brickell, CEO of Internet-based derivatives trading platform Blackbird Technologies, has been nominated by President George W. Bush to be director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), according to a statement...

Infobolsa Deutschland Readies German NetStation.(pilot test of market data desktop)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Infobolsa Deutschland, the new subsidiary of Madrid-based Infobolsa, is pilot testing a German-language version of Infobolsa's Internet-based NetStation market data desktop and plans to roll it out in the next few weeks. "Customers in...

BearingPoint Taps Formant.(Christopher Formant named EVP)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... BearingPoint, formerly KPMG Consulting, has named Christopher Formant EVP, with responsibility for its North American financial services business unit. Formant, formerly president and CEO at consultancy Scient, will direct the company's...

Spain's Equities Depository Adds Settlement Cycle.(SCLV)
February 17, 2003... Spain's central equities depository, SCLV, will be adding an extra processing cycle on settlement date to allow local agent banks more time to deliver securities to the depository for settlement. Instead of a single cycle at 9 a.m. (local...

Access International Names CEO.(John Buckner Jr)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Data management firm Access International has tapped John Buckner Jr., formerly chief executive of Symphoni Interactive, a securities services consulting firm, as its new president and CEO. Buckner replaces Jeff Metter, a co-founder of the...

PHLX Asks for SEC Guidance on Internalization.(Philadelphia Stock Exchange)
February 17, 2003... The Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) last week asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to spell out "clear and consistent guidelines" regarding internalization in the options markets. The PHLX's request was in response to a Jan. 24...

Easybroker Expands Through Deal With SunGard STN.(Easybroker International, SunGard Financial Networks' SunGard Transaction Network)
February 17, 2003... Easybroker International, a fledgling London-based order routing and execution network provider, has implemented SunGard Financial Networks' STN (SunGard Transaction Network) on a private-label basis, allowing STN to expand its European reach....

ISE Launches Auto-Ex For Complex Orders.(International Securities Exchange)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... The International Securities Exchange (ISE) has launched ISEspreads, a new service that allows auto-execution of complex options orders in an electronic environment, in direct competition with its floor-based rivals. While the ISE owes...

Misys Adds FIX Interface For Banking, Securities.(Misys Securities)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Misys Securities' new Java-based FIX adaptor for Misys' enterprise integration broker, Meridien, has been rolled out to its first client. The Meridien FIX adapter allows electronic receipt of customer orders and can extend the orders for...

Nasdaq's Powerview Service Goes Online.(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Nasdaq is offering its Powerview market data service to investors on Nasdaq.com. The service provides the best bid and ask price from each registered Nasdaq market participant and aggregate size of all quotes and orders at each of the top...

Moneyline Talk Swirls.(Moneyline Telerate fails to get financing)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... Sources said last week that Moneyline Telerate went to Bank One for additional funding and didn't get it. The lead investment capital for Moneyline's acquisition of Telerate was provided by One Equity Partners, a fund of Bank One. Bill Walsh,...

Euroclear France Automates ETF Primary Market.
February 17, 2003... Euroclear France, France's central depository, last week laid claim to launching Europe's first automated processing service for exchange traded fund (ETF) transactions in the primary market, which will reduce operational costs for creating...

Calypso and DataSynapse Team.(Calypso Technology and DataSynapse form alliance)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2003... San Francisco-based Calypso Technology, a provider of cross-asset trading systems, is expected to announce an alliance with DataSynapse, a peer-to-peer e-commerce software vendor, to integrate and co-market their software packages. Calypso...

Fast-Forwarding: Reuters to focus on single distribution architecture.(Reuters announces its Fast Forward restructuring program)(Interview)
February 24, 2003... Reuters announced a restructuring program called Fast Forward last week as it released full-year 2002 financial results that showed a 12-percent decline in revenue for all of Reuters' business lines and a 6-percent drop for its core business,...

Moneyline's U.S. Users Down 30%, Says Source.(Moneyline Telerate)
February 24, 2003... Moneyline Telerate saw a decline of about 15 percent in users of its traditional feed and workstation business last year, and is down to about 30,000 users of those products, according to a source who has seen the vendor's financials. ...