Securities Industry News articles from February 2004

Securities Industry News archives from February 2004

Sources: Trade-Through Reform Coming.
February 2, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission is readying a proposal to change the controversial trade-through rule and could publish it for comment as early as this month, according to industry sources. "The SEC is unlikely to put out a concept...

Nybot's Exotic Goals: After record-setting year, exchange looks overseas for growth.
February 2, 2004... After experiencing a record-setting year for volume, the New York Board of Trade (Nybot) is setting its sights on overseas ventures, from helping create new commodities exchanges abroad to licensing its warehouse receipt technology around the...

Where Does FIX Belong?(technology)
February 2, 2004... The recent restructuring of Citibank's trading businesses raises the possibility that FIX-which has long been entrenched in the operations space-may increasingly be grouped with other products that customers pay for as part of brokerage...

An 'Article in Many Parts.(draft of the Investment Services Directive of European Union)
February 2, 2004... The tricky business of creating a constitution that recognizes different constituents while favoring none is not the sole province of emerging nations. Although less about life and death than the nascent efforts under way in Iraq, the still...

A New Edict for Retail Brokerages: Embrace Change...Or Else.
February 2, 2004... Change is afoot in the financial services industry, and it's not limited to the boardrooms and executive offices. Last year was not a banner one for financial services firms, particularly for retail brokerages. Moreover, the near-term outlook...

Discrepancy Leaves Time Slipping into the Future.(Market timing)
February 2, 2004... Unbeknownst to the securities industry, an international organization based in Geneva is working quietly and methodically on its behalf, striving to find a solution to a problem the industry doesn't seem to realize it has. The dilemma? Nothing...

IT Matters More Than Ever, Execs Say: Does it matter anymore?
February 2, 2004... If you take the word of a panel of information industry CEOs convened at last week's Software & Information Industry Association industry summit-which included AOL chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller and Reuters Group CEO Tom Glocer-then the...

Eurex U.S. Set for CFTC's Approval.(Commodity Futures Trading Commission)
February 2, 2004... Swiss-German derivatives giant Eurex is hopeful the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will approve its U.S. subsidiary as the newest futures exchange at a public meeting scheduled for Wednesday. The hearing marks the final stage of the...

GE Consolidates Fixed-Income Ops.
February 2, 2004... GE Asset Management will announce today that it has tapped LatentZero's full suite of analysis, order management, accounting and compliance systems to support $125 billion in fixed-income portfolios in the U.S. and U.K. The implementation...

Data Management the Focus In Capco's Iverson Purchase.
February 2, 2004... Global consultancy Capco has revived itself in the data management arena by purchasing Iverson Financial. For Iverson, the deal, funded with part of the $15 million in capital Capco raised in a fourth round of financing last December,...

Closing Opening: ArcaEx readies alternative to Nasdaq pricing.(Archipelago Exchange)
February 2, 2004... With the rollout of the Archipelago Exchange's closing auction at the end of this month, market data users will be able to choose between closing prices in Nasdaq stocks from three sources-ArcaEx, Nasdaq, and the NASD securities information...

Industry: Disclose, Don't Ban, Soft Dollars.
February 2, 2004... The Investment Company Institute's proposal to ban the use of broker "soft-dollar" commissions to pay for third-party research, computer systems and trade publications for asset management firms and advisers, goes too far, industry members said...

Matching Services in Swaps Square-Off.
February 2, 2004... The U.S. Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s recent extension of its matching service, Deriv/Serv, to offer automated payment reconciliation for credit default swaps underscores the growing competition in the over-the-counter derivatives...

New Schema, New Phase for FIXML.(FIXML 4.4 )
February 2, 2004... FIX Protocol Ltd. last month announced the release of the FIXML 4.4 schema, a version that will not be compatible with earlier versions of the FIXML spec based on document-type definitions (DTDs), a less robust technology. The upgrade could...

Buddying Up with IM Lists: Technology set to be leveraged for audio, video, among other apps.
February 2, 2004... Some days, I wish my phone worked the same as my instant messaging buddy list. In IM, I can see at a glance who's around and who's not, who's away from his computer and who's too busy to talk. All I have to do to chat with someone is click on...

Filling Inboxes: Viruses, Spam, Phishing Scams.
February 2, 2004... There are two kinds of e-mail problems brokerages will face in 2004. There are the ones with known, though not perfect, solutions-spam, viruses, those annoying misspelled e-mails to customers that ask for their account information. They...

Jefferies Rolls Out E-Mail, IM Archiving.
February 2, 2004... Jefferies & Co. is in the midst of installing an e-mail and IM archiving and surveillance system to replace a proprietary system the firm has outgrown. The brokerage, which expects to complete the project by the end of this quarter, is...

When Cometh the Next Era In Fixed-Income Technology?
February 2, 2004... Dexter Senft, head of fixed-income e-commerce at Lehman Brothers, recently took time out to conduct an e-mail interview with Shane Kite, senior reporter at Securities Industry News, about the impact that technology has had on bond operations...

S&P to Begin Amex Pilot.(Brief Article)
February 2, 2004... Standard & Poor's said late last week that a pilot to use closing prices from the American Stock Exchange for 12 Nasdaq stocks listed in the S&P 500 would commence on March 1. The program was originally set to begin on Dec. 1 but was...

NASD Awaits Study on Impact of Trace Prices.
February 2, 2004... The NASD said it expects to receive early this year an independent study commissioned to determine the liquidity impact of publicly disseminating prices of 120 Baa/BBB-rated corporate bonds via the Trace reporting system. The results of...

Red Hat Guarantee a Boost to Linux Users.
February 2, 2004... Red Hat's announcement last month that it would guarantee that its Linux distribution was free of copyright problems-and that it would immediately correct any such problems that might arise-should help allay the concerns of its many Wall Street...

-ST_BY-.(European Union's proposed investment services directive)(Brief Article)
February 2, 2004... "Harmonization is about achieving the same end results, not total uniformity. The EU's member states have differing investment cultures and legal frameworks, so it is virtually impossible for them to undertake every practice in exactly the same...

Trade-Through Not Through.
February 9, 2004... A revamped trade-through rule is likely to apply to the Nasdaq marketplace, as the Securities and Exchange Commission mulls bold reforms that would bring regulatory consistency across newly defined "fast" and "slow" markets. "The SEC's...

NYSE's Life in the Fast Lane: Exchange's auto-execution strategy, a response to its electronic rivals, now awaits SEC approval.
February 9, 2004... Within three weeks of taking the helm at the world's largest stock market, New York Stock Exchange CEO John Thain has turned the 212-year-old lumbering giant into a fast market. Almost. The NYSE still needs the Securities and Exchange...

Fund Valuation: Art or Science?
February 9, 2004... While the Securities and Exchange Commission remains divided on what type of oversight, if any, to impose on the estimated $700 billion hedge fund industry, attendees at a Managed Funds Association conference late last month agreed they don't...

A Whole New Ballgame.(stock markets)
February 9, 2004... Almost exactly five years ago, we ran an article in Securities Industry News that reported on some real world-that is, real estate-effects of the trend toward automated trading. In particular, we examined how several exchanges' trading...

Data Management: It's Sexier Than You Might Think.
February 9, 2004... After almost a decade of writing about the importance of data to risk management, and to the securities and banking industry overall, I find myself at the point of stooping to tabloid tactics. For those of you that are reading this simply...

Political Futures Traders: An Unseen Voting Bloc.
February 9, 2004... The presidential primary season is in full swing, a time when pundits will grasp at most anything to predict an outcome: man-on-the street interviews, exit polls, fund-raising success. But one indicator rarely cited by the talking heads is the...

SEC Budget: Looking for a Few Good Staffers.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
February 9, 2004... In a year of a record deficit and a federal budget with virtually no increases in funding for anything not directly related to defense and homeland security, the Securities and Exchange Commission stands out as an exception. In the budget sent...

Commission OKs Eurex U.S.
February 9, 2004... Eurex U.S., the American subsidiary of the Swiss-German derivatives giant, last week received the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's approval as an electronic contract market, kicking off full-blown competition in Treasuries debt futures...

New Exchange Turns to Savvis.(Brief Article)
February 9, 2004... Eurex U.S. will rely on financial extranet providers Savvis and Radianz to deliver market data for the new U.S. futures exchange. This is the first time the Deutsche Boerse-the exchange's parent-and Eurex have made market data available via a...

ESF: Open Access Needed for Processing.(European Securities Forum)
February 9, 2004... The European Securities Forum's 2004 game plan for reducing the high costs inherent in cross-border clearance and settlement calls for open access to European central banks and clearance and settlement systems. The ESF's nuts-and-bolts...

E-Voting Bolstered by Report.(Electronic equipment)
February 9, 2004... The U.K.'s central depository, Crest, got a big endorsement for its lagging electronic voting service last week when pension fund reformist Paul Myners encouraged issuers, investors and others to cast their votes through automated means by the...

Daiwa Unit Automates Corporate Actions.(Daiwa Securities America Inc.)(Brief Article)
February 9, 2004... Xcitek is set to announce today that Daiwa Securities America, the U.S. broker dealer subsidiary of Japan's Daiwa Securities, has licensed its XSP software to further automate its corporate actions processing. Daiwa Securities America had...

Euro Funds: Following Gartmore's Lead?(Gartmore Investment Management Ltd.)
February 9, 2004... Gartmore Investment Management's decision to outsource its GBP30 billion ($55 billion) European back office to HSBC's has brought another player into the fund administration outsourcing fray and continued to spur the cross-Atlantic debate over...

The New Market Makers.(Interview)
February 9, 2004... Decimalization, the humbling of the tech sector and a three-year market downturn have changed the Nasdaq market making business. Markets may have just become too difficult for people to seize upon minute trading opportunities, when smart...

Content Management Tools Grow to Embrace Work Flow.
February 9, 2004... Boston Capital Corp. last year was busy moving its files out of paper boxes and into electronic form. It was a huge undertaking, with off-site storage rooms housing boxes and boxes of information, involving millions of pages of documents each...

Protocol Changes Unlikely.(Brief Article)
February 9, 2004... The increasing demand for automation at the New York Stock Exchange will probably not lead to a protocol war over the best way to deliver trading information, at least not yet, according to market players. For that matter, the...

OnTheRecord.(NASD CEO Robert Glauber)(Brief Article)
February 9, 2004... "In this era of broad disclosure in the financial markets-and aggressive price-shopping by consumers for products of all kinds-providing price information for every corporate bond possible is not only a matter of regulatory compliance, but...

SEC Might Allow Access Fees for Market Makers.
February 16, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering allowing market makers, whose business has been hurt by decimalization, to charge access fees as ECNs do, according to sources close to regulators. "The access fee proposal would include...

Transparency Tug-of-War: Regulators want to move quickly; bond market players say, 'take it slow'.
February 16, 2004... Regulators stressed the need to move forward on transparency initiatives at the Bond Market Association's legal and compliance conference earlier this month, while market participants urged caution against taking invasive steps that would harm...

Processing: EU Building Block.
February 16, 2004... What is now happening in clearing and settlement is as important as the European Monetary Union was in shaping the financial system to deliver progress in Europe, said Alberto Giovannini, CEO of Milan-based Unifortune Asset Management, and...

Perception Reality.(SECURITIES)
February 16, 2004... At some point in the not-too-distant past, the idea took firm root in our culture that perception is reality. To be sure, it is not a new concept; even ancient kings understood that to be strong, one had to appear strong. But modern...

Quantifying Compliance Costs Key to Sustaining Profitability.
February 16, 2004... The financial services industry today is under scrutiny from all quarters. Managers of both buy-side and sell-side firms alike must respond to increasingly demanding regulatory requirements, such as anti-money laundering provisions,...

U.K.'s Third-Tier Market Tries to Elevate Standing.
February 16, 2004... In the orderly world of U.K. stock markets, every organization is supposed to know its place. At the top of the heap is the "Official List," which is the London Stock Exchange's main board. Next is the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), which...

Swift Automates Around FIX.
February 16, 2004... Industry network and messaging utility Swift is moving to automate message certification for its SwiftNet FIX service, which will enable users to send trade data to its hub-based FIX connection. So far, about 50 sell-side and 50 buy-side...

FPL Picks Vendors for Certification.
February 16, 2004... The industry's long-discussed plans for certification of FIX advanced to the next phase last week, as FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) tapped four vendors to build certification modules: Aegis Software, B2Bits, Javelin Technologies and TransactTools....

MarketAxess Plans $150M Public Offering.(Brief Article)
February 16, 2004... Multidealer corporate bond trading platform MarketAxess is planning an IPO to raise up to $150 million, according to a filing submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. The platform's move follows recent market talk that...

Three's a Charm When it Comes to IDs.
February 16, 2004... Just how many international securities identification standards does the world need? One might seem a logical answer, but it appears that commercial interests dictate at least three. A joint initiative by Telekurs and the Anna Service...

Let the Chicago Games Begin.
February 16, 2004... Newcomer Eurex U.S. is promising to ratchet up competition in Chicago in what may turn into the battle of the fixed-income derivatives platforms. The U.S. subsidiary of the Swiss-German derivatives giant, which made its debut on Feb. 8,...

SEC Issues Concept Release for Options.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
February 16, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission last week published a long-awaited concept release that seeks to address major market structure issues in the options markets, such as payment for order flow, internalization and decimalization. ...

BNY Bullish on Soft Dollar Biz in Tisi Deal.(Bank of New York's purchase of soft dollar brokerage company)
February 16, 2004... Bank of New York's recent purchase of Thomson Financial's soft dollar brokerage, Thomson Institutional Services (Tisi), for the bank's Westminster Research Associates (WRA) subsidiary shows a strong commitment to the sector, said WRA's...

Lord Abbett: Blade Runner.(Company's initiative to install Hewlett-Packard's blade computing hardware)
February 16, 2004... Lord Abbett & Co. is in the midst of a blade computing initiative to support its management of growing assets, new funds and products while consolidating servers and preventing unneeded systems proliferation, according to the firm's top IT and...

Anonymity Remains Big Draw as Industry Focuses on E-Systems.
February 16, 2004... The New York Stock Exchange's highly publicized shift toward automation, announced earlier this month, was prompted in part by longtime pressure from institutional investors. One of the most prominent voices in the debate has been Mary...

Radical Change' Comes to Trading.(Brief Article)
February 16, 2004... Electronic trading systems have been a boon to buy-side traders, providing greater efficiencies for trading stocks. But they have also created more work for traders, said Kevin Cronin, head of domestic equity trading at AIM Investments and...

SSGA Revamps Order Management System.(State Street Global Advisors's Minerva)
February 16, 2004... State Street Global Advisors next month will begin the process of implementing Minerva, LatentZero's trade order management system, as part of a yearlong project that will lead to the replacement of the SSGA's current OMS, Macgregor's Predator,...

Clearing Expansion Targets Institutions.
February 16, 2004... Taking a cue from its U.S. activities, Penson's U.K. operation, Penson Worldwide Settlements, has extended its reach from the traditional custody and back-office processing arena to the front office through its Nexa trading system and a new...

T. Rowe Looks Beyond Corporate Actions.
February 16, 2004... T. Rowe Price will expand its use of Smartstream's straight-through processing product suite beyond corporate actions to include custodian reconciliation and probably confirmation and settlement, following testing in the Baltimore-based asset...

Big Board Can't Wait to Go Fast.(auto-execution system)
February 16, 2004... The New York Stock Exchange submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission its proposed rule change for its auto-execution system, Direct+, on Feb. 6. NYSE Direct+, which operates under a pilot system, already handles about 7 percent of...

Disagreement Remains Over Next Steps.(clearing and settlement )
February 16, 2004... Looking to clearing and settlement organizations to solve pan-European macro-economic problems is to put the spotlight on the wrong issues, said Martin Brennan, head of origination at Clearstream, the clearinghouse owned by Germany's Deutsche...

SEC OKs Plan Amendments to Consolidated Tape.(Securities and Exchange Commission )(Brief Article)
February 16, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission approved an amendment to the Consolidated Tape Association (CTA) plan and the Consolidated Quotation (CQ) plan to delete provisions that exempt plan participants from paying market data fees for data on...

On The Record.(securities trading)
February 16, 2004... "The trade-through rule effectively grants floor specialists monopoly power over trading in NYSE-listed stocks. As a result, Florida's investors-truly, all investors-suffer from slower trade executions, increased transaction costs and decreased...

Opt-Out Battle Commences.(controversial trade-through rule)
February 23, 2004... Even before the Securities and Exchange Commission formally unveils its reform proposals on Tuesday, the market structure debate is already raging over a possible opt-out clause to the controversial trade-through rule. The trade-through...

Now, the Reforms: SEC plan may spawn uniform rules across markets.(Securities and Exchange Commission )
February 23, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday will present its much-anticipated market structure reform proposals, which may bring the biggest changes to U.S. capital markets since Congress' 1975 mandate for the creation of a national...

Mission: Iraq for Volunteers.(economy)
February 23, 2004... How do you get high-powered Wall Street executives to go to struggling countries to share their expertise? Try offering them no money. That's what the Financial Services Volunteer Corps has been doing for 14 years, and the strategy has...

Emulating the Evil Empire'.(Securities industry)
February 23, 2004... With pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training-surely one of the happiest times in a sports fan's calendar-the big news in New York last week was the Yankees' signing of arguably the best player in baseball, Alex Rodriguez, from the...

Industry Needs Soft-Dollar Accountability....Not Abolishment.(securities law)
February 23, 2004... As commonly known, soft dollar commissions for services have existed since 1975, when the Securities and Exchange Commission abolished fixed commissions. That same year, under Section 28(e) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the SEC...

Euro Counterfeiting Brings EU Together.(financial fraud)
February 23, 2004... From the beginning, unity was the theme behind the creation of the European Union, with the euro serving as the great unifier. Out went the hassles of dealing with lire, francs, marks, guilders, etc., and in came the benefits of a single...

Rights to GSTPA's TFM Finally Up for Sale.(Global Straight-Through-Processing Association's Transaction Flow Manager)
February 23, 2004... Buergli & Naegli, the Zurich-based bankruptcy trustee for the Global Straight-Through-Processing Association's operating unit, GSTP, has officially put the organization's Transaction Flow Manager up for sale almost a year and a half after the...

Tullett Taps IPC for Monitoring Service.(IPC's Advanced Fault Management )
February 23, 2004... Interdealer broker Tullett Liberty in London, a beta customer for IPC's Advanced Fault Management (AFM) monitoring service, expects to continue to use the service when the beta period ends and will also explore the idea of using it in other...

Enhancing Data Distribution.(Tullett Financial Information)(Arcontech )(Brief Article)
February 23, 2004... Tullett Financial Information, the market data subsidiary of interdealer broker Tullett Liberty, will rely on distribution software from Arcontech to provide its data directly to customers via Web browsers and Excel spreadsheets. Tullett,...

IMlogic Takes Next Step in IM Integration.(Instant messaging)(IM Linkage )
February 23, 2004... Instant messaging is fine, but wouldn't it be nice if all the different IM platforms could talk to each other, and IM was more closely integrated with the other applications you use every day? That's exactly the question IMlogic attempted...

Euroclear Promotes Commercial Paper Automation.
February 23, 2004... In a move aimed at bolstering the fast-growing European commercial paper industry, international depository Euroclear has agreed with the International Primary Markets Association (IPMA) on who should be held liable and how much to pay for not...

Regulators Likely to Temper Standards.(European System of Central Banks and Committee of European Securities Regulators )
February 23, 2004... In the face of fierce criticism from the custodian bank community, industry players predict that European regulators will tone down some of their proposed new standards on clearance and settlement. The custodian banks' hopes were fueled by...

Citi Rides Outsourcing Wave.(qualified institutional buyers )
February 23, 2004... Keeping track of paperwork for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) is often a nightmare for broker-dealers-but that could be changing. Earlier this month, Citigroup confirmed that it has handed over the entire QIB process to...

Web Services Standard Leveraging FIX Efforts.
February 23, 2004... Web Services-Reliable Messaging (WS-RM), a standard being spearheaded jointly by Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems and BEA Systems, is not only following a trail blazed by the FIX protocol-it's following in its footsteps. The purpose of...

An Offer They Can't Refuse?(FIX protocol)
February 23, 2004... The FIX protocol-and the vendors who support it-are ready to support fixed-income trades in FIX, but the most critical piece yet to be put in place is the business case. One way to help sell the industry on the idea could be to make...

New application Keeps Out Trojan Horses, Viruses.
February 23, 2004... Raymond James & Associates has a problem. Employees, independent advisers and customers are all logging in from insecure machines at home, so when family members download free content off the Internet, hidden nasty software may be attached....

No More Waiting for Cancelled Orders?(electronic markets)(Floor exchanges )
February 23, 2004... Floor exchanges are wasting no time trying to bridge the technology gap with electronic venues, an effort that could steal some of the virtual markets' thunder before the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed reforms become law. ...

On The Record.(Brief Article)
February 23, 2004... "We reject the view that a president's job is just to raise the value of the stock market." -Massachusetts Senator and Democratic Presidential front-runner John Kerry, after winning the Wisconsin primary on Feb. 17 "It is LaBranche's...