Securities Industry News articles from March 2004

Securities Industry News archives from March 2004

Thain: NYSE Will Go Hybrid.(New York Stock Exchange CEO John Thain )
March 1, 2004... New York Stock Exchange CEO John Thain is bent on turning the world's largest stock market into an IT-powered hybrid by popular request and despite some skepticism about the plan. "I'm really intent on turning New York into a hybrid...

Donahue: Winner Does Take All.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.)
March 1, 2004... As European exchanges target the U.S. arena, Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) CEO Craig Donahue believes the old adage "winner takes all" will once again prove true in the derivatives markets. "Yes, winner takes all, and yes, the CME will...

"Exchanging" OTC Contracts.(Over the counter markets)
March 1, 2004... The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's approval last month for the New York Mercantile Exchange to clear additional over-the-counter derivative contracts has served to heighten competition with the Intercontinental Exchange and reflects the...

Donaldson's Long First Year.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
March 1, 2004... No one can say that William Donaldson didn't know what he was getting himself into when he took the reins of the Securities and Exchange Commission almost exactly one year ago. As a former chairman of the Big Board, founder of one of Wall...

Testing Early and Often is the Key To an Effective AML Program.(anti-money laundering )
March 1, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission, the NASD, the Federal Reserve Board and the New York State Department of Banking have all adopted strict review standards in their evaluation of the effectiveness of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance...

Guide to Derivatives.
March 1, 2004... Retail investors now have access to sophisticated trading tools that would have only belonged to a hedge fund desk just a few years ago. As a result, it may be time to venture beyond vanilla-only equity trading and become a better all-around...

The Cost of Free Fix Certification.
March 1, 2004... FIX Protocol Ltd.'s plan to offer fixed-income certification free to FPL members and charge the larger universe of non-members could be thwarted by TransactTools' offer to certify across the board for free, industry sources say, and is a move...

Tale of Two Vendors: Cameron and Nyfix.
March 1, 2004... In a case of two FIX vendors providing connectivity at different stages of the trade lifecycle, Cameron Systems and Nyfix Millennium are both providing technology for fund manager RCM, formerly RCM Dresdner. In addition to Version 6.1 of...

Lava Trading Adds Forex to Trade Roster.
March 1, 2004... Lava Trading is branching out from its core equities trading business, adding foreign exchange functionality to its trading platform; it will soon trade twelve major currency pairs, including the dollar, the euro, the yen, and the pound. ...

TSX Seeks to Step Into Energy Vacuum.
March 1, 2004... The TSX Group Inc., parent company of the Toronto Stock Exchange, is hoping to fill some of the void in the energy market created by the collapse of Enron. Last week, in a presentation to industry analysts and reporters, TSX Group president...

Tools That Bridge the Technology Divide.
March 1, 2004... While today's traders are restricted because the functionality they want cuts across multiple media, next-generation tools will be unfettered by the medium used and, therefore, will relate more closely to trading behavior, according to a new...

FIX Expands to Forex Space.(foreign exchange trading platform )
March 1, 2004... In announcing last month that Jack Lemonik, CTO of foreign exchange trading platform FXall, and Steve Donovan, chief investment technology officer of Massachusetts Financial Services, have been appointed co-chairmen of the FIX foreign exchange...

Know Your Customer's Voice.(Speech recognition system)
March 1, 2004... New technology allows identity verification over the telephone At Barclays Capital, most customers communicate with the investment bank by telephone, and the familiar sound of a customer's voice is a basic line of defense against an...

Futures Industry Won't "Give-Up" on AML.
March 1, 2004... While regulators are trying to apply the anti-money laundering rules contained in the USA Patriot Act as uniformly as possible across the securities industry, the inconvenient reality is that operational details for different parts of the...

Schwab's Penney: IT Key in Delivering Economical Services.(Interview)
March 1, 2004... Charles Schwab is a high-profile adopter of such cutting-edge technologies as Linux, Web services and grid computing. In the first of a two-part interview, Geoff Penney, EVP and CIO at Schwab, discusses the firm's aggressive technology...

Trade-Through May Challenge Nasdaq.
March 1, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing to extend the controversial trade-through rule to the Nasdaq universe, which is likely to create new challenges for a market that has served investors well without it for three decades. ...

FMC Enters Central Matching Game.(Financial Models Co.)
March 1, 2004... By launching an upgrade to its post-trade communications network, Toronto's Financial Models Co. (FMC) can lay claim to offering Canada's first home-grown central matching service, but its success is unsure since central matching has yet to...

On The Record.(Annette Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission director )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... "A fundamental tension exists between how these electronic trading models interact with the floor-based trading models of traditional exchanges." -Annette Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission director of the division of market...

$1B Trade-Through Reform.
March 8, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed reform of the controversial trade-through rule could cost the financial industry more than $1 billion in additional regulatory spending in the first two years of its implementation, according to...

Regulation ATS Revisited:.
March 8, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing in its new Regulation NMS to apply the trade-through or best-price rule to virtually any venue where an execution takes place. In that respect, the proposal revives the "What is an...

Hedge Fund Regulation Looms.
March 8, 2004... The $750 billion hedge fund business, with its high-stakes trading strategies and ultra- low profile, has become a major player in U.S. securities markets. Some hedge funds, such as Stamford, Conn.-based SAC Capital Advisors, have grown so...

EU Hopes Once Again.
March 8, 2004... It would not be an exaggeration to say that more than a few European securities regulators and exchange officials have become exasperated with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And those not completely frustrated have at least grown...

Just How Standard Do Standards Need To Be?
March 8, 2004... The recent announcement by FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) on its certification program for fixed income highlights an ongoing debate not isolated to the financial services industry. On one side of the debate are those who see standards as a way to...

Frankfurt Exchange Clarifies' Misunderstood Rule.
March 8, 2004... The Frankfurt Stock Exchange's announcement that depository Clearstream Banking Frankfurt does not have the exclusive right to settle exchange-traded securities could amount to much ado about nothing, since qualification to settle those...

Nasdaq Set to Roll Out Closing Cross.(Nasdaq Stock Market Inc.)
March 8, 2004... Nasdaq is planning to launch next month its closing cross to support better mutual fund net-asset valuations and answer demand from the growing contingent of portfolio managers using index-based strategies. "An enormous amount of money is...

NASD Consolidates Arca-Instinet Arbitration Case.(National Association of Securities Dealers)
March 8, 2004... NASD has consolidated three separate claims that pit two major players in the Nasdaq marketplace, ArcaEx and Instinet, into a single litigation where Arca seeks $213 million from its rival. The case is pending. "These three actions-the...

Ex-Nasdaq President to Make NYSE Debut.(Brief Article)
March 8, 2004... Richard Ketchum, the former Nasdaq president who helped stir the electronic market out of its mid-1990s collusion scandal, is taking over as chief regulatory officer at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday. Ketchum's appointment was...

EMXCo Adds Settlement Functionality.
March 8, 2004... EMXCo, a messaging service for U.K. funds, has finally expanded its functionality into the settlements arena and will allow distributor clients to choose the means of payment. Without becoming a bank regulated by the Financial Services...

MDDL Middleware at Merrill.(market data definition language)(Gigaspaces )
March 8, 2004... In an effort to reduce the costs and increase the efficiency of the delivery of market data, Merrill Lynch has teamed up with XML vendor Gigaspaces on a project designed to reduce the number of technologies used for market data transport and...

KAG Grab Bag.(Kapitalanlagegesellschaft)
March 8, 2004... ABN Amro Mellon Securities Services has joined the growing ranks of custody providers in Germany becoming the latest to win a depotbank license-following State Street, J.P. Morgan and a host of German banks-to provide services for institutional...

Schwab Weaves Complex Web' of Technology.(Schwab)(Interview)
March 8, 2004... If it's a leading-edge technology, chances are that Charles Schwab has already looked at it-if not begun implementing it. Such is the case with Linux and Web services. In the following interview-the second in a two-part series-Schwab EVP and...

The SEC's Budgeting.(Securities and Exchange Commission )(Brief Article)
March 8, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission is providing estimates for the costs that the financial industry would bear to prevent trade-throughs and implement an opt-out clause under a new Regulation NMS. The estimates are based on hourly...

On The Record.
March 8, 2004... "They're headed in the right direction." -SEC Chairman William Donaldson on the NYSE's plan to increase the volume of electronic trading on the exchange "Remember, we are regulators-accustomed to looking on the darker side, although, of...

Active Traders Like Nasdaq.
March 15, 2004... Nasdaq, which witnessed a steady decline in market share in 2003, might have turned the corner, as the addition of ECN-type features is starting to draw active traders to its SuperMontage platform. Nasdaq's overall market share hit a trough...

CBOE Readies Futures Exchange.(Chicago Board Options Exchange)
March 15, 2004... The Chicago Board Options Exchange is set to launch the newest derivatives market, CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE), which will start trading futures on the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), a prime gauge of investor sentiment. Futures on VIX-a...

Back-Office Burden for Funds.
March 15, 2004... The seemingly endless flow of new regulations indisputably lumps new compliance requirements on registered broker-dealers and the firms processing their trades. But they also appear likely to create the heaviest compliance burden ever for...

Compliance and Customers.
March 15, 2004... Compliance has always been a necessary evil. In a perfect world, the time and energy spent catching mistakes and spotting dishonesty wouldn't be needed, and the dollars and manpower spent annually on oversight would be more happily applied to...

Long-Term Commitment Required for BCP.(business continuity planning)
March 15, 2004... TowerGroup research into the state of business continuity planning (BCP) in the U.S. securities industry indicates that firms are more adequately prepared to face disasters now than at any time in the past-even disasters of large magnitude. ...

Many Ups and Downs Amid Market's Four Long Years.
March 15, 2004... Doubtful anyone had to duck popping champagne corks at Nasdaq's offices last week. While a touch of the bubbly is often a part of anniversary celebrations, this particular one was hardly the happiest of occasions. March 10 marked the official...

FISD Looks to Extend MDDL Reach.(Financial Information Software Division)(market data definition language)
March 15, 2004... The Financial Information Software Division (FISD) of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) has contributed a new entry to the trade data standards welter with FISDmessage, an XML-based protocol that is essentially an extension...

Dubai Has Regional Hopes for Exchange.
March 15, 2004... The Dubai International Financial Exchange (DIFX) has tapped Euronext, Atos-Euronext, LCH.Clearnet and international depository Euroclear to draw up a blueprint for a new exchange to rival Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for the role of the Middle...

LSE Makes Firm Move in Netherlands.(London Stock Exchange PLC)
March 15, 2004... After almost a year of positioning, the careful dance for the lucrative Dutch market among Europe's three major exchanges is about to turn into a real competition. Last week the London Stock Exchange announced it has signed up to 85...

Not Over 'Til It's Over: Well past the deadline, customer identification programs remain works in progress.
March 15, 2004... The industry is still wresting with compliance a full six months after a multi-agency consortium jointly issued its final version of the USA Patriot Act's customer identification program (CIP). The rule was issued by six government...

MFS on the FIX- for-Fixed-Income Bandwagon.
March 15, 2004... The clearest indication that a message protocol is beginning to catch fire is when a trading entity pays a vendor to implement it. So while the jury may still be out on FIX for fixed income, it's a good sign that MFS Investment Management...

Compliance: Where People and Technology Meet.(Interview)
March 15, 2004... Tom Guinan holds a distinct perspective within the industry. As a managing director at Pershing, he has responsibility for compliance and risk management at one of the largest clearing firms. Thus, he wrestles with myriad issues affecting both...

Front Shifts Beyond the Office.
March 15, 2004... Two years ago, traders at BNY Brokerage, a unit of the BNY Securities Group, started asking for instant messaging on their desktops. It was a request difficult to ignore, since it was the customers themselves who were ultimately behind it. ...

Watching Your Back on IM.(instant message)(Brief Article)
March 15, 2004... If you're John Smith's manager and notice that John is looking a little shifty-eyed lately every time you remind him of your company's "no unapproved IM" policy, you might want to check that he isn't sending IMs behind your back. How do...

South Africa Hopes Basel II Gives it an Edge.(Accord on the International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards, 2001 (Draft))
March 15, 2004... Because it is an international standard, the new Basel II accord is providing emerging market countries, and the banks within them, an opportunity to improve their credibility-and hence their competitiveness-by complying early. Case in...

Compliance: Multi-Department Idea.
March 15, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to rule by March 30 on an NASD proposal that would make it mandatory for all members to have a chief compliance officer who will co-certify with the CEO that the firm complies with securities...

Taxman Cometh; So May Ops Issues.(European Union Savings Tax Directive)
March 15, 2004... The European Union Savings Tax Directive (ESD), which could go into effect as early as next January, will result in some significant operational headaches-and whopping compliance costs-for a range of financial services institutions, including...

Public, Private Sectors Push XBRL.
March 15, 2004... Government regulators may help accomplish what the market often fails to do: jump-start the use of a messaging protocol in the financial services industry. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is requiring that by the fall all bank call...

From Russia With FIX For Renaissance Capital: Brokerage market's first firm to install FIX-based linkage for equities trading.
March 15, 2004... The former Soviet Union has been a magnet for foreign capital for more than a decade, but during that time it probably ranked with most of the developing world as a prospect for FIX connectivity, or electronic trading in general: very, very...

Liffe Launches Eurodollars.(Brief Article)
March 15, 2004... Euronext's derivatives subsidiary, Liffe, is launching on Thursday three-month Eurodollar futures and options on futures contracts to meet global demand for the full slate of leading short-term interest-rate (Stir) products. Liffe has...

On The Record.(Securities and Exchange Commission)(Brief Article)
March 15, 2004... "We need to be mindful that, taken too far, this type of disclosure could seriously intrude on the privacy of portfolio managers." -SEC chairman William Donaldson during a public meeting at which the SEC tentatively adopted new...

Market Data Missive.(Securities and Exchange Commission's meeting)
March 22, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission will hold two open meetings in Washington and New York next month to discuss Regulation NMS, the broadest set of reforms since Congress' 1975 mandate for a national market system. Banning subpenny...

Next-Day? Not Today: While SEC pushes for processing changes, T+1 remains unlikely.
March 22, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission's request for comments last week on improving transaction processing in the United States may have re-ignited the industry's debate over a shortened settlement cycle, but observers remain steadfast that...

Are Annuities Next in Probe?
March 22, 2004... Trading abuses in the mutual fund industry, which federal and state regulators have been focusing on since last year, may soon take a back seat to variable annuities. A three-pronged investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission,...

An Edgy Time, Yet Again.(economy)
March 22, 2004... It's impossible to look at the nightmarish pictures from the Madrid bombings and not immediately flash back to Sept. 11th. For those who witnessed firsthand the attacks on the World Trade Center, as well as the hundreds of millions who felt its...

Mellon's Radical Idea: Less Could Be More.(Mellon Global Securities Services)
March 22, 2004... When Mellon Global Securities Services decided to enter Uganda two years ago, it represented the bank's 80th subcustody market-a magic number that Mellon touted in a press release announcing the news. Granted, Uganda seemed a bit off the beaten...

Nasdaq Unveils Single Platform, Cross.
March 22, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission last week approved Nasdaq's much expected closing cross, one of several initiatives the electronic stock market has undertaken to update its marketplace. Nasdaq has also completed the migration of New...

New Zealand Considers New Subregistry.
March 22, 2004... New Zealand's stock exchange (NZX) wants to create a subregistry for share ownership changes to eliminate trading glitches caused by its current system where three private transfer agents-known as registrars-track movements in stock holdings....

WG 11 Building Toward Data Standard.(Working Group 11)
March 22, 2004... ISO XML Working Group 11 adjourned its January meeting in Frankfurt ready to expand on the work done by the ISO XML Working Group 10, which was convened over two years ago to implement a data model to converge FIX and Swift messaging protocols,...

An ISO by Any Other Name...(International Organization for Standardization)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... In a move intended to end several years of confusion, the ISO central secretariat, the SC4 chairman and Swift-the ISO 15022 registration authority-have jointly proposed to assign a new reference number to the XML-enabled version of ISO 15022....

Deutsche Bank Sets Course For Domestic Custody Growth: After exiting global custody,.
March 22, 2004... Although Deutsche Bank sold its global custody business and some of its domestic custody to State Street in August 2002, its subsequent acquisition of Dresdner Bank's custody operations represents a quick retrenchment that could squelch...

Tradeware-Omiris Deal Crosses Atlantic.(Tradeware Systems Corp and Omiris Networks)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... Tradeware Systems Corp.'s acquisition of the financially ailing Omiris Networks-expected to be announced today-expands the vendor's reach in the order management arena from the U.S. to 16 European markets and allows it to offer the full gamut...

CLS Spurs Migration.(CLS Bank)
March 22, 2004... The migration to Continuous-Linked Settlement, the foreign exchange settlement system developed by CLS Bank, is continuing on a bank-by-bank basis, with an ancillary effect being the gradual phase-out of MT 300 messages, the Swift message type...

On The Record.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... "Where board members do not live up to the duty of care they owe their shareholders, we will try to hold them accountable. This should signal to board members that we are going to be very attentive to their behavior." New York State Attorney...

Big Board Engages in Opt-Out Battle.
March 29, 2004... The New York Stock Exchange is mounting a campaign to oppose the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed reform that would give investors a choice between best price and certainty of execution. At the same time, the NYSE has yet to...

Clearing the Air?(Bank of America)
March 29, 2004... Bank of America's tentative agreement with regulators to divest its clearing unit as part of the Securities and Exchange Commission mutual fund probe represents the first example of the regulatory hammer coming down on a back-office provider...

Futures in Flux.(Chicago Board of Trade)
March 29, 2004... An Illinois Supreme Court ruling last week lifted a major hurdle for the Chicago Board of Trade's plan to demutualize, heralding arguably the next major event in a global futures industry in flux. Demutualization is a crucial step for the...

In Defense of Offshoring.
March 29, 2004... Conventional wisdom once said that Presidential campaigns do not begin in earnest until after the World Series. Forget that: several factors, including the expansion of baseball's playoffs deep into October, put that notion to rest a long time...

Not Much Return in U.K. Fund Probe-and That's OK.
March 29, 2004... Trading abuses that have scandalized the U.S. mutual fund industry are not being duplicated in the United Kingdom, according to the Financial Services Authority. In a six-month investigation, which began shortly after New York Attorney General...

BNY Set to Open Brooklyn Ops Center.(The Bank of New York)
March 29, 2004... The Bank of New York is transferring 1,500 securities services operations executives beginning next month to a 229,000-square-foot facility in Brooklyn as part of its ongoing disaster recovery efforts, bank officials said last week. Those...

Canada and EU Move to Cut Red Tape.
March 29, 2004... The Canadian government and the European Union announced agreement on a set of negotiating principles that should pave the way for less burdensome cross-border securities trading. In Ottawa last week, Canadian and EU trade representatives...

Nikko-Foliofn Deal a Japan First.(separately managed account )
March 29, 2004... Japanese brokerage Nikko Group has teamed up with Foliofn, a U.S. online brokerage and back-office software provider to offer the country's first separately managed account (SMA) service so investors can directly own a variety of Japanese stock...

PHLX Bets on Futures With Susquehanna.
March 29, 2004... The Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX), which has received the Securities and Exchange Commission's green light to demutualize, is planning to expand its small futures exchange subsidiary via an alliance with Susquehanna International Group...

Experts: Compliance Must Be in 'DNA.
March 29, 2004... Any lull there might have been in the spate of industry-wide migrations has ended now thanks to unprecedented and multi-faceted compliance demands from federal and state regulators. The message to conferees at the 10th annual gathering of the...

ISITC's Plan: Ops Seal of Approval.
March 29, 2004... The announcement last week that ISITC-IOA is planning to develop a credentialing program for the securities industry is evidence of the ongoing demand for quantifiable expertise throughout the industry. The credential will come with the...

Grids Promise to Move Beyond Analytics.(Grid computing)
March 29, 2004... Pete Johnson has seen grids come a long way over the past few years. They've been used for space exploration and to map the human genome. Biotech companies use them for designing drugs, for running experiments with massive amounts of data and...

Utility Computing Still to Come.
March 29, 2004... Despite benefits, firms still hesitant to outsource certain functions Many people like the idea of utility computing. Companies shouldn't have to manage their computer hardware, the same way that they generally don't need to run their own...

LTCM Echoes.
March 29, 2004... The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has created a competitive markets advisory council (CMAC) with five "prominent financial experts, including three Nobel Prize winners" to study market issues at a time of fierce rivalry among the derivatives...

On The Record.(Timothy Geithner, New York Federal Reserve President )
March 29, 2004... "The current deterioration in the U.S. fiscal position and the acute decline in the net national savings rate represent risks to the financial system and the economy as a whole." -New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner, speaking...