Securities Industry News articles from July 2003

Securities Industry News archives from July 2003

Market Data Debate Simmers.
July 14, 2003... A brief filed by Charles Schwab in support of Bloomberg's petition against the New York Stock Exchange regarding its Liquidity Quote product raises once again the unresolved issues related to the pricing of and regulatory structure for market...

Soft-Dollar Days: Despite increased scrutiny, deal-making continues.
July 14, 2003... Despite the prospect of increased regulatory scrutiny on soft-dollar arrangements, companies continue to forge deals in the sector to lure customers and establish critical mass. Last week, block equity indications of interest (IOI) matching...

Firms Coming to Terms With Basel II Challenges.
July 14, 2003... While the widely publicized-and controversial-Basel II Accord is not expected to take effect until late 2006 at the earliest, some of the world's largest financial institutions and vendors are already in full swing with a combination of...

CME's CLS Link Boosts Forex Automation.
July 14, 2003... In a move that will extend automated settlement to a market where manual processing is dominant, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) plans to provide settlement services for its foreign exchange futures transactions through CLS Bank. ...

eSpeed Expands Patent Litigation Strategy.
July 14, 2003... eSpeed's recently filed patent-infringement suit against rival BrokerTec is the latest example of the e-trading provider's strategy of aggressively wielding its arsenal of patents to collect millions of dollars. The new suit could also...

Isma's Langton: Beware Legislative Solutions To Market-Related Issues.(International Securities Markets Association )
July 14, 2003... Last month, John Langton, chief executive and secretary general of the International Securities Markets Association (Isma) discussed the present and future of the international bond markets at the Federation of European Securities Regulators'...

SIC Joins SIA Dematerialization Effort.
July 14, 2003... Even though it would effectively mean the end of its business, one of the players working to help the industry achieve completely certificate-less or "dematerialized" stockholding in the United States by 2010 is the Securities Information...

SIS Finds New Uses for Certificates.(SIS SegaIntersettle will unveil from museum dedicated to antiquated securities certificates)
July 14, 2003... At a time when many of the world's largest depository systems have either immobilized or dematerialized their securities holdings recording transfer of ownership in electronic form, one-in Switzerland-is bucking the trend by trying to preserve...

Ajaxo Lesson: Tech Trade Secrets Are Short-Lived.
July 14, 2003... A recent court decision illustrates the importance of documentation for each party considering a business relationship, or long and painful litigation is likely to result. A case in point is the suit wireless technology vendor Ajaxo filed...

FSA Finalizes ATS Rules Amid Waning Interest.(Financial Services Authority finalizes alternative trading systems rules)
July 14, 2003... If it is the job of regulators to anticipate rather than react to industry needs, then the Financial Services Authority has discharged its duty rather well in the area of alternative trading systems. After more than two years of hearings and...

EMC Plugs Product Hole With Legato.
July 14, 2003... EMC Corp.'s acquisition of Legato Systems, announced last week, means that EMC will now be able to offer a more comprehensive range of storage-related products of particular interest to securities firms-including in the area of e-mail...

Industry Seething After Treasury Revisits AML Rules.
July 14, 2003... There's "a lot of anger" in the financial services industry after the U.S. Treasury Department asked for comments this month on what circumstances might require firms to retain photocopies of identification documents relied upon to verify...

E-Bond Aggregators Battle Over Trading Volumes.
July 14, 2003... Bloomberg disclosed its electronic fixed-income trading volume for the first time last week, even as its some of its rivals among the multidealer-to-buy side bond-trading platforms-which include Market-Axess, TradeWeb and EuroMTS-disputed those...

FIX Protocol Key to BondVision.(BondVision enters into agreement with Javelin Technologies )
July 14, 2003... Milan-based BondVision is banking on the FIX protocol to extend its e-trading reach, as the platform provider has entered into an agreement with Javelin Technologies to develop a FIX engine for BondVision's customers. BondVision, part of...

MDDL Ready for Expansion on Several Fronts.(Market data definition language; Financial Information Services Division of Software & Information Industry Association develops standard for real-time streaming market data)
July 14, 2003... Continuing its aggressive expansion plans for the market data definition language (MDDL), the Financial Information Services Division (FISD) of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is developing a standard for real-time...

Challenged in Netherlands, Euronext Cuts Trading Fees.
July 14, 2003... Faced with a rising tide of dissatisfaction, Euronext moved last week to head off the defection of Dutch stockbrokers by introducing a new fee structure aimed at reducing transaction costs and "leveling the playing field" for Euronext...

MTS Targets New Markets.
July 14, 2003... The MTS family of trading platforms for European government debt recently got a little bigger, through the introduction of two new segments: "New EuroMTS" for Eastern European and Cyprus government bonds, and MTS Austrian Market for Austrian...

Clearstream Offers Free Overnight Bund Borrowing.
July 14, 2003... International depository Clearstream has taken a first step toward reducing the number of failed trades in German bunds between its members and Euroclear Bank by offering participants of Clearstream Banking Frankfurt free overnight loans of...

Study: $830M Unreclaimed in U.S.(U.S. investors failed to recoup about $830 million in withholding taxes on dividends and interest income earned overseas last year)
July 14, 2003... U.S. investors failed to recoup about $830 million in withholding taxes on dividends and interest income earned overseas last year, according to a new study published by Goal, a London-based tax reclamation software and services provider. ...

Web Portals Expand to Include Functional Content.
July 14, 2003... When Internet portals first came on the scene in 1999, Wall Street firms immediately saw how they could be useful-but it wasn't until recently that firms began putting the technology into practice. UBS PaineWebber has been experimenting...

HSBC to Purchase Korean Fund Administrator AM Tek.(Brief Article)
July 14, 2003... Asia/Pacific custodian HSBC will acquire 82.19 percent of Korean fund administrator Asset Management Technology (AM Tek) for $12.47 million in cash, putting itself in a dominant position in Korea's fund administration industry. HSBC, which...

MDSL, Madura Join Forces For Market Data Management.(Market Data Services Ltd. and Madura Associates)
July 14, 2003... Market Data Services Ltd. and Madura Associates have teamed up to jointly market their global market data management products and services. U.K.-based MDSL, which also has an office in New York, provides Market Data Manager, software that...

City Networks Set to Offer Automated Confirm Service.(City Networks is teaming up with Automated Confirmation Service)(Brief Article)
July 14, 2003... City Networks is teaming up with the Automated Confirmation Service (ACS), a 50-member interdealer broker consortium, to provide eAutoConfs to the group's London-based members. An Internet-based deal notification and confirmation service...

Reuters Adds Credit Derivatives Information From GFI Group.(Brief Article)
July 14, 2003... Reuters has inked an exclusive deal with GFI Group for the credit derivative broker's credit default swap data and Fenics credit pricing tools. GFI is the leader in credit derivatives trading, said Michel Everaert, global head of product...

Linedata Nabs SunTrust, Certification for .Net.(Brief Article)
July 14, 2003... Order management systems provider Linedata said the private client services division of SunTrust has selected its LongView trading system to provide automated portfolio modeling, trading and compliance monitoring at 300 user desks. The...

Xcitek Signs on Wachovia Bank For Corporate actions Software.(Brief Article)
July 14, 2003... Wachovia Bank plans to license XcitekCost Basis software from Xcitek to provide cost allocations and tax status consequences on corporate actions. XSB offers notifications on announcements such as spin-offs, distributions, mergers, stock...

GL Trade, Sonic Team Up For Direct-Access Trading.(Paris-based GL Trade and New York City-based Sonic Financial Technologies)(Brief Article)
July 14, 2003... Paris-based GL Trade and New York City-based Sonic Financial Technologies have joined forces to provide their respective customers access to the other's network. The arrangements will provide GL Trade clients with Sonic's direct-access...

Moneyline Picks HyperFeed For Ticker Plant Technology.(Brief Article)
July 14, 2003... Moneyline Telerate, which currently relies on Reuters' Bridge ticker plant in St. Louis but must migrate off it by October 2005, has inked a deal with HyperFeed to help it become independent of Reuters. Moneyline is licensing HyperFeed's...

U.K. Trade Groups Seek Fund Automation.(Aim is for straight-through processing for U.K. retail funds)
July 14, 2003... The Investment Management Association, the Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers, and the Association of Independent Financial Advisers have teamed up with the International Securities Association for Institutional...

Tale of Two Instinets.
July 21, 2003... Instinet is splitting its global brokerage and ECN business into two separate corporate units, a strategic move that is bound to have a major impact on the industry. "What [Instinet CEO] Ed Nicoll and his team are doing is to truly and...

Extended Reach: Reuters patents may affect many e-systems.
July 21, 2003... Reuters' patents on a negotiated matching system and on a matching system for displaying credit-filtered bids and offers could prove a threat to many other financial services firms besides Bloomberg if they are upheld as valid. Electronic block...

Issues Remain Over CBOT's Clearing Shift.
July 21, 2003... The Chicago Board of Trade's decision to shift its clearing operations, now at the Board of Trade Clearing Corp., to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, is a fait accompli, but that isn't preventing industry players from continuing to cry foul...

Street to Test Readiness for Cyber-Attacks.
July 21, 2003... The financial markets will soon enter the realm of simulated war-gaming by participating in "Livewire," a faux cyber-attack run by the government, which plans to test the ability of the financial sector and other critical industries to...

FIXML Set for Boost from FPL Working Group.
July 21, 2003... FIX Protocol Ltd.'s formation of a FIXML schema working group for the latest version of the standard will likely ramp up the adoption of FIXML and highlights the increasingly broad deployment of the extensible markup language (XML) throughout...

FSA's Beriault: Costs Pivotal in Evaluating New Regulatory Plans.
July 21, 2003... Speaking earlier this month at a conference in Zurich, Clive Briault, director of prudential standards at the U.K. Financial Services Authority, discussed the regulatory demands on firms in Europe. In the following excerpts from his speech,...

Street Slowly Showing Signs of Life.
July 21, 2003... After the longest market sell-off since World War II, the devastation of Sept. 11, and an avalanche of scandals and regulatory redresses, is Wall Street sensing that the worst is finally over for the financial industry? Quite possibly,...

Amex-GTCR Deal to Proceed.
July 21, 2003... NASD is going ahead with the planned sale of its subsidiary, the American Stock Exchange, to GTCR Golder Rauner despite a Securities and Exchange Commission probe into Amex's regulatory oversight of its options business. "GTCR is fully...

CUSIP Stands Firm on European Pricing Policy.
July 21, 2003... The CUSIP Service Bureau, North America's securities numbering agency, said last week that it will not change its pricing policy for European firms despite lobbying by the Information Provider User Group (IPUG), a London-based trade group...

SegaIntersettle Seeks Funds From TFM's IPR Sale.
July 21, 2003... No word has yet emerged on whether the intellectual property rights of the Global Straight-Through-Processing Association's defunct Transaction Flow Manager has garnered any interest among potential buyers. However, Accumatch, a consortium led...

Cantor Pushes Into Buy-Side Bond Biz.
July 21, 2003... Cantor Fitzgerald continues its push to provide voice-brokered fixed-income sales and trading to the buy side in an effort to become the "one-stop" shop for asset management clients, as well as grow a business apart from its successful eSpeed...

Japan to Spend Less on Market Data Services.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2003... Japan's demand for market data services will grow over the next three years but expenditures will decline about 10 percent from the current $650 million as firms select lower-cost vendors, according to a survey released last week by Matrix...

Moneyline CEO: New Chief Exec to Be Named Soon.
July 21, 2003... Moneyline Telerate is close to choosing a new CEO to replace David Walsh, the chairman and interim CEO of the company said last week. Earlier this year, former CEO Jon Robson, who engineered Moneyline's acquisition of Telerate almost two...

Edelstein Takes Helm at Radianz.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2003... Radianz has tapped P. Howard Edelstein to assume the role of president and CEO after Doug Gilstrap resigns in mid-August. Gilstrap, the first CEO of the company and former COO of Equant's network services division, is leaving the company...

Iron Mountain Gobbles Up Hays.
July 21, 2003... Iron Mountain and its European joint venture, Iron Mountain Europe Ltd., have agreed to purchase Hays IMS, the U.S. and European record storage businesses of Hays Plc, for about $318.2 million. The move comes as storage providers and other...

Smartstream Boosts STP Offerings With Connextive.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2003... Reconciliation software vendor Smartstream Technologies has entered the enterprise application integration software arena through the acquisition of Connextive, a provider of financial messaging and Java-based business process management, for...

CSFB Launches Data, Analytics Offerings.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2003... Credit Suisse First Boston has rolled out CSFB Data & Analytics (CSFB DNA), a new service that is being distributed by Moneyline Telerate, Reuters, Fame Information Services, QA Data Solutions and Quantitative Analytics. The service is also...

HSBC Middle East Live On City Networks' Tram.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2003... HSBC's regional Treasury operations in the Middle East have completed the implementation of City Networks' CityNet confirmation matching module, Tram, for automated Treasury processing and confirmations, City Networks said last week. ...

Omgeo to Use Cameron For FIX Connectivity.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2003... Trade matching utility Omgeo and FIX vendor Cameron Systems announced earlier this month that Omgeo will use the CameronFIX engine to provide FIX-compliant interfaces for two future straight-through-processing solutions. The planned...

Sames Among Cuts at Reuters Consulting.
July 21, 2003... In a move that highlights contraction at Reuters Consulting Group, a division of Reuters America, Witold Sames, a longtime figure in the development of the FIX protocol, left the company last week. Sames, who joined the company in March...

BSE, SEC Agree on Amendment for Planned BOX.
July 21, 2003... After meeting with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Boston Stock Exchange (BSE) has agreed to amend parts of its proposal to create an all-electronic derivatives market, the Boston Options Exchange (BOX). "We will be submitting...

DTCC, CDS in Joint Study.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2003... The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and Canadian Depository for Securities will spend the next four to six months studying ways to collaborate on such areas as risk management, transaction services, information-based services, technology...

KBC Picks ReferencePoint.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2003... Data management software provided Fame Information Services last week said Belgian financial services conglomerate KBC has upgraded to its new suite of reference data management software, known as ReferencePoint. KBC's risk control unit in...

Instinet Wants Changes Not spin-Off.
July 28, 2003... Instinet, which is splitting its value-added global brokerage and ECN operations into two separate units, said the restructuring seeks to boost profitability and is no harbinger of a spin-off. "We need to prove ourselves every day... We are...

Third Time a Charm?
July 28, 2003... With the holy grail of a unified mutual fund industry in Europe edging closer to reality through the introduction of two new European Commission directives, known as UCITS III, securities service providers are looking forward to added revenue...

LME to trade steel, upgrade IT.(London Metal Exchange)
July 28, 2003... The London Metal Exchange (LME) plans to launch next year the world's first steel contracts to answer demand from consumers and financing banks for risk-management tools. The world's largest market for nonferrous metal futures and options...

AIM Pursues Efficiencies But Eschews STP Label.
July 28, 2003... Buy-side firms are the subject of particular scrutiny in these times of automation, as they are viewed by many market players as potentially garnering the greatest efficiencies from moving away from manual-based processes. However, AIM...

Barclays Eyes MDDL: But says vendors must lead industry toward adoption.
July 28, 2003... Keith Berry is the technical lead for the global market data development team at Barclays Global Investors, the asset management arm of the Barclays Group. His team is responsible for the acquisition, normalization, cleansing and distribution...

Basel II Ops Demands Can Boost Derivatives Trading Profitability.
July 28, 2003... The following was written exclusively for Securities Industry News by Lester Wigler, president of The Credo Group, a Stamford, Conn.-based financial services consultancy. Using the proposed Basel II Accord as a catalyst for change, Wigler...

In The U.K., A Rough Time To Lead.
July 28, 2003... As the saying goes, sometimes it's tough to be on top. In the U.K. the most visible example of that old bromide is Prime Minister Tony Blair who must deal almost daily with questions about Iraq. But not all that far from 10 Downing Street the...

FSA Scraps Tough AML Plans.(Financial Services Authority)
July 28, 2003... The U.K. securities watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, has scrapped plans to make all U.K. financial firms verify their current customers' identities, citing time and cost prohibitions that surfaced in a PricewaterhouseCoopers study....

Barclays Begins Trading IR Swaps on Bloomberg.
July 28, 2003... Barclays Capital has gone live with its single dealer trading platform for interest rate swaps, which is delivered over Bloomberg terminals through BARX, an index of fixed income products on its single dealer page. Users are able to monitor...

OnExchange Tries to Build on Recent Success.
July 28, 2003... Having won agreements with the New York Board of Trade (Nybot) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) to license its clearinghouse software system ECS, five-year old onExchange is now seeking a potentially more lucrative encore with an...

Euronext.liffe to Roll Out BCP Plan.
July 28, 2003... Euronext.liffe, the derivatives arm of cross-border exchange Euronext, is geared up to roll out a new storage area network this quarter that will interconnect data centers in London and Paris that will then be able to serve as backups to each...

Ameritrade Cuts Technology Costs.
July 28, 2003... Close to 25 percent of the $220 million in reduced operating expenses Ameritrade has realized through its merger with Datek is due to cuts in technology staff and systems consolidation, according to Ameritrade executives. Ameritrade last...

Swift to Launch Fixed Income Pilot for FIX 4.4 in 3Q.
July 28, 2003... Swift, the banking and securities industry messaging and payment utility, announced at last month's Securities Industry Association Technology Management Conference in New York its plans to launch a pilot program for fixed-income trading. It...

NYSE's Britz: Repeal of Trade-Through Rule Won't Serve Investors.
July 28, 2003... Robert Britz, president and co-chief operating officer of the New York Stock Exchange, takes aim at newer trading systems eyeing the listed-stock market in the following editorial submitted to Securities Industry News. In the past five...

Schwab to Roll Out Grid for Advisers.
July 28, 2003... Charles Schwab is working with IBM to "grid-enable" an application that allows financial advisers to crunch numbers for clients in close to real time. Schwab expects the application, called Forecaster, to be in production before year-end....

Lehman Cuts Costs by Focusing in on Server consolidation.
July 28, 2003... To ring costs out of its IT infrastructure, Lehman Brothers undertook an effort to consolidate servers, primarily by making information about server utilization-and cost-available to business line managers. Last July, the firm determined...

low-cost computing Tops wall street, sun's agenda.(Sun Microsystems)
July 28, 2003... With cost containment all the rage on Wall Street, Sun Microsystems is focused on getting its new message out: the company is committed to low-cost computing. At a panel preceding the Security Industry Association's Technology Management...

HP Targets Swift Users.(Brief Article)
July 28, 2003... Sun Microsystems rival Hewlett-Packard unveiled at last month's SIA Technology Management Conference HP Swift Services on .Net (HPSSN), which enables users to adapt their legacy systems to changes made by Swift or other regulatory bodies. ...

Fortis Taps RadianzNet For IP Links.
July 28, 2003... Brussels-based buy-side firm Fortis Investments has signed a three-year contract to use the Internet Protocol-based (IP) RadianzNet network to connect to the sell side, Radianz said last week. RadianzNet will provide trading linkages using the...

Anvil Software Scores Win As Wachovia Chooses Arts.(Brief Article)
July 28, 2003... Anvil Software last week said it has nabbed Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, N.C. as its second U.S. client for its flagship Arts (Anvil Repo and Securities Finance Trading System) package. Wachovia is the second new U.S. customer live with...

ArcaEx connects brokers to ArcaEdge OTCBB platform.(Brief Article)
July 28, 2003... ArcaEx, the new virtual exchange, completed connectivity with its 350 broker-dealer members to ArcaEdge, the over-the-counter bulletin board (OTCBB) platform it launched earlier this month. "We are completing establishing connectivity with...

Financial Fusion to Supply Software to Digital China.
July 28, 2003... Financial Fusion has agreed to supply bank, payment and capital markets software to Digital China Software Ltd. in an alliance designed to capitalize on investments now being made in the Chinese financial services industry. The Concord,...

CyberTrader Pro 4.0 adds New charting Bells and Whistles.(Brief Article)
July 28, 2003... CyberTrader, Charles Schwab's direct-access brokerage unit, has upgraded its CyberTrader Pro trading platform with version 4.0, which offers new charting capabilities. The new version includes advanced point-and-figure (P&F) charting,...

Australia Leads the Charge for Basel II.
July 28, 2003... Of all the Asia-Pacific countries, Australia is ahead of its peers in complying with the Basel II guidelines with National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and ANZ the best prepared. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority...

NYSE, LaBranche clash over e-mail.(Brief Article)
July 28, 2003... Tension escalated last week between the New York Stock Exchange and leading specialist firm LaBranche & Co., which said it was "threatened with sanctions" by the NYSE for refusing to produce all personal e-mails from its employees since January...

Reuters Spotlights Goldman and Lehman Deals.
July 28, 2003... Reuters, which reported interim results last week, took the opportunity to tout two deals: Goldman Sachs has renewed and revised an existing contract that involves a number of Reuters products, and Lehman Brothers has signed on as the first...

Moneyline Taps Feeney For CEO.(Brief Article)
July 28, 2003... Moneyline Telerate has named Christopher Feeney, formerly president of Multex, as its CEO. David Walsh, who has been acting CEO, will continue as non-executive chairman. Walsh, who has been chairman of the vendor since 2001, became CEO in...

STA calls for changes in Nasdaq trading.(Security Traders Association)
July 28, 2003... The Security Traders Association (STA) last week released a "White Paper," which calls for several key changes in Nasdaq stock trading and recommends other steps to boost the efficiency and liquidity of U.S. securities markets. STA CEO...