Securities Industry News articles from January 2009

Securities Industry News archives from January 2009

Start-Ups Feel VC Squeeze.(News)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Tom Groenfeldt As venture capital firms suffer through the credit crunch, the companies they have invested in, including financial technology start-ups, are finding it difficult to secure additional funding. For example, New...

Spending Cuts Could Spare Execution, Order Management Systems.(Special Report)
January 5, 2009... Byline: John Hintze Brokers and their institutional customers are expected to spend considerably less money on technology this year, but those cuts may be less pronounced for customer-facing and cost-saving products such as execution and...

Niche Opportunities in Global Crisis; From U.S. to Asia, vendors are responding to a rapidly changing landscape.(Outlook 2009)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Wang Fangqing As financial firms across the globe cut back on spending, postpone projects and weigh the need for certain cutting-edge solutions, few technology providers have been left unscathed. "Nobody is talking about what they...

Volatility and Data Demands Driving Options Tech.(Outlook 2009)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Alexa Jaworski Volatile market conditions rattled Wall Street throughout 2008, but for providers of options-focused technology it has been a boon. "Volatility in and of itself isn't going to cause technology spending-it's the...

Wall Street Slow to Warm to Windows Vista.(Technology)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Maria Trombly Even before the credit crisis hit, adoption of Microsoft Corp.'s oft-criticized Windows Vista operating system was slow on Wall Street. And with IT budgets tightening across the financial services industry, many firms...

New ADR Policies Pose Problems for Foreign Issuers.(News)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Chris Kentouris Amendments to the rules that exempt foreign stock issuers from U.S. reporting requirements have made it easier for banks to set up unsponsored American Depositary Receipt (ADR) programs. But for non-U.S. companies...

Outgoing CFTC Chair Offers Take on Regulatory Revamp SEC, CFTC merger would be a mistake, says Lukken.(News)
January 5, 2009... Byline: John Hintze President-elect Barack Obama has indicated that revamping the financial regulatory system will be an early priority for his administration. And while the form that the new structure will take-and what that will mean for...

Hedge Funds Giving SMAs Warm Embrace; Investor demands for access, transparency spurring adoption.(News)
January 5, 2009... Byline: John Hintze George Soros, in recent testimony before Congress, predicted that the global financial crisis will wipe out as much as three-fourths of hedge fund assets. Fearing massive losses, many fund managers have turned to...

MarketAxess-ITG Partnership.(News Desk)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Editorial Staff Addressing client demands for cross-asset-class tools to measure best execution, agency brokerage Investment Technology Group (ITG), which focuses on equities and equity derivatives, has announced that it is...

ISE-Direct Edge Deal Done.(News Desk)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Editorial Staff International Securities Exchange's (ISE) equities market became a subsidiary of the Direct Edge electronic communications network in a previously announced deal that closed on Dec. 23. ISE, which operates a leading...

Conference Plans Shift in Unstable Market.(News Desk)
January 5, 2009... Byline: John Sandman The financial services industry's conference calendar is likely to undergo more than a few alterations in 2009 as potential attendees consider staying home. Many conference organizers are planning to change the format...

Making Multi-Prime Work.(Guest Comment)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Chris Momsen Investor assets and returns can no longer remain vulnerable to the risk of the single-prime-brokerage model. To effectively manage business and thrive in today's rapidly evolving market, it is imperative that funds...

For Centralized CDS Clearing, More May Not Be Merrier.(Special Report)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Shane Kite Exchanges are gearing up to offer clearing for credit default swaps (CDS) and regulators are pushing to mandate price reporting. But new disputes are surfacing as the sector seeks to mitigate counterparty risk and...

Millennium Taps GlobeOp.(News Desk)(Millennium Management)(GlobeOp Financial Services)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Editorial Staff Millennium Management, a multi-strategy investment firm with more than $11 billion in assets under management, said earlier this month that it has hired GlobeOp Financial Services as its administrator. "We are...

Industry Mulls Potential of Nasdaq Clearing Initiative; Does the NSCC utility need a competitor?(News)(Company overview)
January 19, 2009... Byline: John Hintze With Nasdaq OMX Group slated to launch a clearing service in the third quarter, exchange officials have been pressing industry players for feedback on how best to compete against the National Securities Clearing Corp....

DMA a Priority In Emerging Markets Amid Sagging Results.(News)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Chris Kentouris Despite diminishing returns in many of the once heralded emerging markets, financial services firms and network providers are bolstering their direct-market access (DMA) tools as they prepare for a resurgence. ...

Open-Source Technology May Gain as Wall Street Cuts Back.(News)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Katherine Heires With staffing and resource cuts forcing financial firms' IT managers to do more with less, many industry observers see wider adoption of open-source technology on the horizon. "The market for open source among...

Madoff Scandal Ensnares Finra, Calls for Adviser Oversight Grow.(News)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Carol E. Curtis The Securities and Exchange Commission is not the only regulator taking heat for Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., last week asked Mary Schapiro, CEO of the Financial...

ISITC Aims to Bring Efficiencies to Trailer-Fee Processing.(Data Management)
January 19, 2009... Byline: John Sandman The International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication (ISITC) is moving full speed ahead with a message type designed to improve the processing of fees mutual fund companies pay distributors...

CBOE's New York-Area Exchange Due This Summer.(In The News)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Alexa Jaworski Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) officials said last week that they hope to launch by August a fully electronic exchange in the New York metropolitan area, pending regulatory approval. C2, first announced in...

Townsend Releases Upgrade to RealTick EMS.(In The News)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Alexa Jaworski Trading technology provider Townsend Analytics last week released an enhanced version of its flagship RealTick execution management system (EMS) that it says allows users to route orders across multiple dark...

YouDevise Upgrades TIM.(News Desk)(Trade Ideas Monitor)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Editorial Staff In response to high volatility, lower leverage and trading-desk cutbacks, youDevise, a London-based provider of Web-based applications, says it has improved the so-called alpha-capture system it operates. The...

Brady Buys Comsoft.(News Desk)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Editorial Staff Brady, a U.K.-based provider of trading and risk management technology for the commodities industry, announced last week that it has purchased privately owned Commodities Software (Comsoft), a supplier of systems...

People In the News.(News Desk)(Lee Hodgkinson to leave SWX Europe)(UBS AG has appointed Peter Sany)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Editorial Staff Two months since SIX Swiss Exchange unveiled plans to close SWX Europe, Lee Hodgkinson, CEO of the London-based platform, said he is leaving the company in April. Hodgkinson, who joined SWX Europe predecessor virt-x...

CSE Program: A Failed Experiment.(Comment)
January 19, 2009... Byline: John Sandman The Securities and Exchange Commission's decision in September to shut down its consolidated supervised entities (CSE) program followed the stunning collapse of the independent investment banking sector in the U.S....

Ten Predictions for Financial Services in 2009.(Guest Comment)(Company overview)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Sean O'Dowd In 2008, the storm clouds that had been building over the financial services industry burst and washed away the old world, leaving a transformed landscape. Venerable institutions were swallowed up, nationalized or...

Instinet Adds Hong Kong Stocks to Asian Venue.(Trading)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Alex S. Dai Agency brokerage Instinet said last week that it is offering Hong Kong equities on CBX Asia, an alternative trading platform that was previously limited to Japanese stocks. Instinet, a subsidiary of Nomura Holdings...

Rising to the Fair-Value Challenge.(Viewpoints)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Editorial Staff The Financial Standards Accounting Board (FASB) generated major controversy in 2006 when it issued a rule requiring firms to adhere to a standardized approach to fair-value accounting. As the financial crisis has...

U.K. Group Developing Counterparty Data Standards.(Data Management)
January 19, 2009... Byline: Chris Kentouris London-based think-tank JWG-IT has created a working group that will advise U.K. regulators on operational requirements for financial firms' management of wholesale customer data. According to JWG-IT, the...