Securities Industry News articles from January 2008

Securities Industry News archives from January 2008

Retail Investors Are Drawn to Nasdaq's All-Electronic Open~Instant opening may present threat to NYSE, Amex crosses.
January 7, 2008... Some of the industry's largest order aggregators are shifting their opening trades in Tape A and, especially, Tape B securities over to the Nasdaq Stock Market's new opening cross, to take advantage of the prompt price discovery when the...

Subprime Mortgage Crisis Hits Brokers as Finra Targets CMOs.
January 7, 2008... In a move indicating that the subprime mortgage problems have spilled over into the brokerage industry, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) has initiated a sweep examination of broker-dealers, targeting sales of collateralized...

Patent Filed for Reference Data Utility: Risk-Mitigating Utopia, or False Hope?
January 7, 2008... A pair of financial services veterans have filed a patent application for a reference data management utility that would allow financial firms to not only outsource the cleaning and normalization of reference data but share the risks involved...

Rising Volumes Escalate Latency Arms Race~Software, hardware solutions rush to fill demand.
January 7, 2008... Simon Garland chuckled as he examined charts showing the spikes in quote volumes on the New York Stock Exchange that began in August. "It was like Christmas," said the CTO of Kx Systems, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of high-performance,...

Staffing Worries Hit Hedge Funds' Back Offices~Study says funds competing for small pool of operations, technology staff.
January 7, 2008... The hedge fund industry may be growing by leaps and bounds but it is encountering difficulty hiring qualified back-office personnel, and enticing them to stay. Seventy percent of hedge funds have trouble retaining operations and other...

New Options Algos From BNY ConvergEx, UBS.
January 7, 2008... Responding to mounting demands for algorithmic strategies for the booming equity options market, agency brokerage BNY ConvergEx Group and Swiss bank UBS last month introduced suites of algorithms. The new BNY ConvergEx algorithms,...

Wombat Addresses Data Deluge With RDMA Technology.
January 7, 2008... Market-feed distribution specialist Wombat Financial Software has introduced a product that employs a shared memory software architecture that the company calls an innovative way to address the flood of market data that active trading...

NSX Adds ECN Quotes.
January 7, 2008... Rapidly growing electronic communications network (ECN) Direct Edge has begun displaying quotes on the Chicago-based National Stock Exchange (NSX), which also anticipates displaying quotes from Bloomberg Tradebook. Direct Edge moved...

Thinkorswim in Canada.
January 7, 2008... Chicago-based online options brokerage and software developer thinkorswim last week announced its expansion into Canada. The firm said Canadian traders and investors will be able to open thinkorswim accounts and trade using the brokerage's...

North American IT Spending Sluggish in 2007.
January 7, 2008... Financial services institutions in North America spent an estimated $116.8 billion on information technology last year, 4.7 percent more than the $111.6 billion spent in 2006. That compares with overall global growth of 5.9 percent, and an...

Getting the Most of a Vista Migration.
January 7, 2008... The launch of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system is a critical inflection point for information technology professionals in the financial services field. Regardless of how soon it happens, most IT environments will migrate to...

ATSs Gear Up for Global Fragmentation~U.S.-based operators await market structure changes in Europe, Canada, Asia.(Company overview)
January 7, 2008... As the world's financial markets edge closer to U.S.-style fragmentation, U.S. firms are putting their know-how and solutions to work in other countries--and hoping that the market structure changes pick up speed. In Canada--closest to the...

Interdealer Platforms Point the Way ~Electronic fixed-income trading could see growth and consolidation.
January 7, 2008... A flurry of announcements in the electronic bond trading sector late last year may provide signposts for the sector's direction in 2008, a year that could see further acquisitions as the fixed-income market continues to deal with the...

IT Rising to Asset Servicing Challenges~Operational obstacles top list of technology demands in new year.(Company overview)
January 7, 2008... "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order," said Alfred North Whitehead, a 19th century British mathematician and philosopher. The asset servicing industry, which includes some of the world's...

Finra Is Proving Principled'~Electronic-records guidance offer an early look at SRO's regulatory approach.(Financial Industry Regulatory Authority)
January 7, 2008... The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (Finra) final guidance on the review and supervision of electronic communications, including, for the first time, wireless handheld devices, may be an early indication that the self-regulatory...

Subprime Crisis Exposes Data Inadequacies~Risk analysis, enterprisewide data management increasingly intertwined.
January 7, 2008... A centralized data management solution may not have saved hedge funds and investment banks from their exposure to the subprime debt crisis, but it likely would have made that exposure easier to spot and manage. Since the subprime meltdown...

Turquoise Tests Known Strengths in New Arena.
January 7, 2008... Employing a strategy that has worked well for new alternative trading platforms in the U.S., consortium-owned Turquoise is seeking to become a quick hit in Europe, but has encountered obstacles along the way, such as a lengthy search for a CEO...

Technology-Focused Citi Forges Trading Giant~Bank integrating acquired businesses, in-house systems.
January 14, 2008... As a new top management deals with massive credit-related losses, Citigroup's business units have numerous question marks. CEO Vikram Pandit has stated that each business line will be scrutinized with an eye toward selling assets to shore up...

Fair-Value Reporting Rule Brings New Compliance Pains.
January 14, 2008... A new fair-value reporting rule is pushing investment fund managers, hedge fund managers and their service providers to reevaluate their operational procedures and the technology used to collect and report on the data required to price...

Arca Options, Market-Structure Leader' ~NYSE's Boyle plans to leverage momentum in 2008.(Company overview)
January 14, 2008... Introduced in August 2006, NYSE Arca Options has been a major beneficiary of the options market's steadily rising volumes. Based on the all-electronic equities platform that NYSE Euronext acquired with Archipelago Holdings in March 2006, NYSE...

Futures Upstart May Use Equities Strategies to Attract New Participants.
January 14, 2008... The consortium of banks and trading firms planning to launch a fully electronic futures market this year are seeking not only to take a portion of the existing exchanges' profits--which they've helped build--but to diversify the asset class'...

FpML Version Outburst: Controlled Migration~Credit downturn accentuates need for straight-through processing.
January 14, 2008... Since its inception nearly ten years ago, the financial products markup language (FpML) has gone a long way toward automating the clearance and settlement of a wide range of derivative instruments. But a flurry of recent upgrades--reflecting a...

Cambodia Moves Forward With Exchange Plans.
January 14, 2008... Cambodia, with some assistance from the Korean government and Korea Exchange (KRX), is aiming to raise its profile among Southeast Asia's growing markets with the opening of its first stock exchange, expected in 2009. Cambodian Prime...

Belgium Goes Paperless.
January 14, 2008... Belgium brought in the new year with a new regulation banning companies from issuing physical certificates for new securities in bearer form. As of Jan. 1, all Belgian entities can issue securities only in dematerialized--electronic--or...

Taiwan To Sell Stake.
January 14, 2008... The Taiwan Stock Exchange plans to sell a 25 percent interest to a foreign market center, according to exchange spokesperson Lizhong Wen. Taiwan is in talks with the New York Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bourse, CME Group and Nasdaq Stock Market...

Chi-X's New Investors.
January 14, 2008... New York-based agency brokerage Instinet announced last week that a consortium of 13 major banks is buying a minority stake of undisclosed size in its Chi-X Europe alternative trading system (ATS). Tony Mackay, president and managing director...

People in the News.(Norbury Financial Systems)(appointments)
January 14, 2008... Boston-based investment management consultancy Citisoft has hired financial technology veteran Christopher Russo as managing director. Russo, previously executive director of client operations for trade management services provider Omgeo, will...

Time to Rethink Sepa?(Single Euro Payments Area )
January 14, 2008... The Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa) is due to go live Jan. 28, but a detached observer looking at implementation issues could be forgiven for thinking that it is years away. While time-to-market is important, unrealistic deadlines don't...

Alpha-Capture Systems on the Upswing ~Trade Ideas platform makes gains as competitors enter market.
January 14, 2008... Trading ideas and recommendations from brokers were once the stuff of casual conversation or a quick online message, but a different perspective appears to be gaining ground. London-based Trade Ideas (TIL) calls them a form of intellectual...

NYSE Readies MatchPoint; Reports Record Volumes~FlexTrade EMS will provide access to point-in-time trading facility.
January 14, 2008... NYSE Euronext has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch NYSE MatchPoint, a portfolio-based, point-in-time electronic cross. The exchange group also reported last week that 2007 was a record year in terms of...

Agora-X OTC Commodity Market Taps OMX Technology.
January 14, 2008... Stockholm-based exchange operator OMX will build the technology for Agora-X, an electronic communications network (ECN) for over-the-counter commodity contracts that plans to launch in mid-2008. "We're taking an application of the ECN model...

Goldman Introduces Transparency to Array of Technology Services.
January 14, 2008... Goldman Sachs has given its open-architecture technology strategy a formal structure, providing clients with a more transparent understanding of its product offerings, and vendors, particularly those receiving the highest designation, the...

China Opens Avenues for Foreign Companies~Regulators allow listings, relax joint-venture rules, increase QFII quota.
January 14, 2008... China has taken major strides toward opening up its financial markets, allowing foreign companies to issue stocks and bonds on the mainland, tripling the allotment for foreign investors, and easing restrictions on securities industry joint...

Lime Brokerage Acquires Minority Stake in CBOE.
January 14, 2008... New York-based Lime Brokerage said last week that it has acquired a minority interest in the Chicago Board Options Exchange's CBOE Stock Exchange (CBSX), which rolled out in January 2007 with the backing of four financial firms. Lime CEO...

NYSE Expands Offerings With Amex Acquisition: Deal affirms concept of a bifurcated options market.
January 21, 2008... NYSE Euronext's acquisition of the American Stock Exchange (Amex), announced on Thursday, gives NYSE the same number of domestic exchange licenses as archrival Nasdaq Stock Market while bringing to an end the independence of a storied stock...

Big ISE Trades Signal Options Traders' Approval of Automated Block Trading.
January 21, 2008... The International Securities Exchange (ISE) executed two record-size orders of options contracts this month, an indication that the institutional investors driving growth in options trading are becoming more comfortable trading sizable orders...

Speed of Markets Accelerates Model Degradation: Good risk models require constant innovation' and blend of art and science'.
January 21, 2008... Financial models are based on assumptions made by the best and the brightest on Wall Street--the quantitative financial engineers, or quants. But when events occur that shake up those assumptions, the models degrade. The bank that most quickly...

On-Demand CRM Model Is In Demand Web-based applications offer a customizable alternative.
January 21, 2008... Customer relationship management (CRM) company Salesforce.com's software-as-a-service model went a long way toward showing major Wall Street firms that Web-based applications can be useful and reliable. Now a number of vendors are joining the...

DTCC Rolls Out CLS-Linked OTC Settlement Service.(Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.)(CLS Bank International)(over-the-counter )
January 21, 2008... Taking a major step toward more efficient processing in the over-the-counter derivatives market, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) has launched its centralized payment-settlement service for credit default swaps (CDS), offered in...

Goldman Sachs Bolsters Options Algorithms.
January 21, 2008... Goldman Sachs' electronic trading division has rolled out two options algorithms designed to improve traders' ability to work an order over time while continuing to react quickly when trade conditions are met. The new algorithms--Iceberg...

NeoNet Down Under.
January 21, 2008... With the announcement last week that it has connected to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Stockholm-based agency-brokerage NeoNet brought its tally of linked global exchanges to 27. Simon Nathanson, CEO and president of NeoNet, which...

Aqua Connects to Tradeware.(Brief article)
January 21, 2008... Aqua, a dark-book alternative trading system (ATS) announced by Cantor Fitzgerald and its technology spin-off eSpeed early last year, has joined the FIXLink connectivity network of direct-market access provider Tradeware Global. It is the...

OneChicago Names COO.
January 21, 2008... OneChicago, the electronic exchange for single-stock futures, has appointed Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) executive Thomas McCabe as COO, effective Feb. 4. McCabe, a two-decade veteran of CBOT, will succeed Robert Walsh, who resigned earlier...

Knight-EdgeTrade Finalized.(Knight Capital Group acquired EdgeTrade)(Brief article)
January 21, 2008... Jersey City, N.J.-based trading giant Knight Capital Group said last week that it had completed its acquisition of EdgeTrade, a privately held agency brokerage well known for its liquidity-aggregating algorithms, for $29.5 million in cash and...

MatchPoint for Portware.(Brief article)
January 21, 2008... Execution management systems (EMS) provider Portware said that it will offer its clients access to NYSE MatchPoint, the New York Stock Exchange's portfolio-based, point-in-time electronic cross, when it goes live on Tuesday. FlexTrade Systems...

People in the News.
January 21, 2008... 29West, a Chicago-based provider of low-latency messaging solutions, has named Tim Mund head of global sales. Mund, an East Coast salesperson for Ottawa-based networking equipment provider Solace Systems since mid-2006, will lead the company's...

Portfolio Margining: A Work in Progress.
January 21, 2008... Nine months have passed since 12 broker-dealers received regulatory approval to offer portfolio margining to eligible customers. By all measures, the new margining rules have been a resounding success. Simply put, portfolio margining is the...

As Sepa Deadline Approaches, Bank Clients Seek Guidance: German companies raise concerns about systems implementation, dueling formats.
January 21, 2008... European banks will begin migrating their corporate clients onto a new payment system next week as the Single Euro Payment Area (Sepa) replaces the various national schemes with a eurozone-wide market for payments. But as the transition gets...

Monitor110 Names E-trading Veteran Carley CEO.
January 21, 2008... Monitor110, a New York-based provider of financial intelligence and real-time Web monitoring to institutional investors, has appointed 22-year financial technology veteran Brennan Carley as chief executive officer. Carley, previously chief...

Finra Finds Widespread Overstating of Trade Volumes.
January 21, 2008... The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) has fined 19 brokerage firms a total of $2.8 million for overstating trade volumes to three services providers that compile rankings. Although the individual fines--ranging from $50,000 to...

Bombay Stock Exchange Signs On With OMX.
January 21, 2008... The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) announced earlier this month that it will implement new trading and clearing systems from Stockholm-based exchange operator OMX in order to strengthen its derivatives and securities businesses. The...

A CEP-based Revolution?(complex event processing)
January 21, 2008... Risk and liquidity management: Those, says HSBC's Malcolm West, are the key areas that will see major benefits this year as the financial services industry's use of complex event processing (CEP) technology continues to extend beyond its...

BEA Making Event Processing Splash: Enterprise software colossus' CEP play a sign of the technology's maturity.
January 21, 2008... In a bid to raise awareness on Wall Street of its complex event processing (CEP) capabilities, Web services infrastructure giant BEA Systems has released a technology framework that guides financial firms in the use of its WebLogic Event...

The Evolution of Event Processing: CEP spending rises along with the technology's applications.
January 21, 2008... Over the past year there has been a great deal of buzz about complex event processing (CEP), the system of harvesting events and correlating them for maximum organizational intelligence. Though the concept has long been associated with academic...

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CBOE, Regulators Ready to Expand Portfolio Margining.
January 28, 2008... Portfolio margin accounts, which have seen increasing demand from sophisticated investors since their introduction in April, will soon include fixed-income-based products. And one exchange is gauging the effects of extending the accounts to...

Collateral Management in the Limelight.
January 28, 2008... International depository Euroclear Bank in November launched a service that provides trade matching and daily portfolio reconciliations between counterparties, helping its customers to manage their exposures and collateral in the...

A Collaborative Approach to MiFID Development: U.K. think tank's technology group aims to keep costs down, manage transition.
January 28, 2008... London-based think tank JWG-IT has brought together a group of technology vendors and consultants to analyze the new demands the industry faces under the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) and develop a common...

Newly Rebranded ValuBond Is More Open, Says Knight.
January 28, 2008... Signaling the completion of a series of technology upgrades, product enhancements and staffing increases, Knight Capital Group has given its ValuBond retail fixed-income trading platform a new look. Atlanta-based ValuBond, which Knight acquired...

Growing Pains for Nascent Carbon Market: Fragmentation, regulatory differences among challenges.
January 28, 2008... As the carbon transaction initiatives pile up--the latest comes from Euroclear, which plans to settle trades on the yet-to-launch Climate Spot Exchange (CSX)--fragmentation is emerging as an obstacle to development of the emerging emissions...

Subprime Crisis, Volatility Fuel Securities Fraud Suits.
January 28, 2008... The subprime mortgage crisis and a volatile stock market sparked a 43 percent increase in securities fraud class-action lawsuits last year, ending a two-year decline, according to a study by Stanford University Law School and Boston-based...

Radianz Signs ISE.
January 28, 2008... BT Group announced last week that it will provide the International Securities Exchange (ISE) with low-latency connectivity and hosting services through financial extranet operator BT Radianz. ISE customers will be able to collocate their...

Reuters' Opra Feed.(Reuters Group PLC)(Brief article)
January 28, 2008... Reuters has introduced Reuters Data Feed Direct (RDFD) for the Options Price Reporting Authority's (Opra) Fast-enabled data feed. According to Reuters, RDFD Opra can now process over 1 million updates per second, leveraging Opra's...

People in the News.
January 28, 2008... Shane Swanson, managing director of equities for Citigroup's markets and banking unit, has been appointed to the boards of Chicago-based National Stock Exchange and its parent company, NSX Holdings. Swanson replaces another managing director in...

SEC Compliance Exams: A 2008 Snapshot.
January 28, 2008... With its limited resources, the Securities and Exchange Commission's office of compliance inspections and examinations (OCIE) has to be selective in picking which of the thousands of firms under its purview get examined and what compliance...

Helping RIAs Reach a Higher Plateau'.(Company overview)
January 28, 2008... The registered investment adviser (RIA) market is experiencing explosive growth--assets under management have shot up from $950 billion in 2005 to $1.4 trillion at the start of 2007, according to Cerulli Associates. Schwab Institutional says...

Investors Fuzzy on Adviser, Broker Differences.
January 28, 2008... Though retail investors are often confused about the differences between financial advisers and brokers, they are generally pleased with their financial services provider, according to a report commissioned by the Securities and Exchange...

OptionsXpress Launches Futures Platform.
January 28, 2008... Chicago-based online brokerage optionsXpress has launched a fully integrated futures platform that it says will allow retail investors to invest in futures products side-by-side with stocks, options, exchange-traded funds, mutual funds and...

New Zealand Readies Infrastructure for Australian ECN.
January 28, 2008... Bolstering its infrastructure in anticipation of the launch of the AXE electronic communications network (ECN) in Australia, the New Zealand Exchange (NZX) has added hardware from Stratus Technologies and connectivity services from financial...

Karvy Outsourcing Unit Aims to Help Clients Grow: U.S.-based president sees opportunities in holistic services.
January 28, 2008... After building up its Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) businesses, Hyderabad-based Karvy Global Services (KGS) is focused on forging stronger relationships with its clients in the U.S. and Canada...