Securities Industry News articles from March 2005

Securities Industry News archives from March 2005

SEC Rule Exposes Omnibus Accounts: Underlying customer data is on the table.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
March 7, 2005... The Securities and Exchange Commission opened the way last week to establishing a more transparent mutual fund processing system, armed with more effective tools for preventing market timing and late trading. The regulator left it up to the...

Instinet Buys A Bridge to Clients: Reuters reorganization's latest chapter.
March 7, 2005... When Reuters announced last week that it will sell Bridge Trading Co. to Instinet for $21.5 million, there were other factors in play beyond the "synergies" usually cited in such cases. For Reuters, a major motivation is its well-documented...

Hard Decisions on Soft Dollars.
March 7, 2005... As regulators on both sides of the Atlantic examine the rules that govern the use of soft-dollar commissions, market observers and players are preparing themselves for an onslaught of new regulation. Securities and Exchange Commission...

The G' Word.
March 7, 2005... As a publication dedicated to the inner workings of securities markets in all their forms and guises throughout the world,Securities Industry News naturally spends a lot of time trying to spot, analyze and understand the trends and implications...

Regulating Beyond Borders.
March 7, 2005... Hector Sants, managing director of wholesale and institutional markets for the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority, spoke last month at the SEC Regulation Outside the U.S. Conference in London. With permission, we excerpt his comments here. ...

Oh, Canada.
March 7, 2005... In the face of inertia, unending turf wars and an unenviable track record, Canada continues to push for the establishment of a single national securities regulator. If that sentence produces a sense of deja vu, there's a reason. Attempts...

Chicago Marts Sign with Shanghai.
March 7, 2005... Last week, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) each signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE). The CME and CBOE, which announced their MOUs around the...

Nybot's eCops Adds Liquidity to Coffee.(New York Board of Trade)
March 7, 2005... While the term straight-through processing (STP) has typically been used to refer to the automated trading, clearing and settlement of traditional equities and fixed-income instruments, the New York Board of Trade (Nybot) is reaching the final...

Agents Shine in Argentina Debt Restructuring.
March 7, 2005... As Argentina's government officials were strong-arming irate investors to accept the terms of its recently completed and highly controversial debt-swap program, some of the world's largest agents were working hard behind the scenes to ensure...

Prior History Haunts Bear's Future.
March 7, 2005... As investigations continue into broker-dealers that may have aided mutual fund late-trading and market-timing activities, recent settlements reveal how regulators are going about distinguishing between the less-than-good, the bad and the ugly....

FISD Eyes Transatlantic Variations on Reference Data Theme.(Financial Information Software Division )
March 7, 2005... The Financial Information Software Division (FISD) of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIAA) has formed the FISD securities model working group, which will help FISD deal with regulatory and jurisdictional demands that must be...

Nasdaq Introduces Pre-Market Breakfast Session.
March 7, 2005... The Nasdaq Stock Market will offer a pre-market trading session at 8 a.m. starting March 28, according to Chris Concannon, executive vice president for Nasdaq Transaction Services. "We do believe it will be good for the trading...

ADP Hooks Up With ArcaEx.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... ADP Brokerage Services Group is offering its clients access to the Archipelago Exchange. Through ArcaEx, clients can trade more than 8,000 equity securities, including New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, American Stock Exchange and Pacific Stock...

E-Trade Rolls Out Two-Factor Identity Check.
March 7, 2005... E-Trade announced last Tuesday that it will roll out two-factor authentication for its retail customers. Explaining the move, an E-Trade spokesperson cited recent security breaches at ChoicePoint and Bank of America as examples of the risks...

Boston Stocks Up on Availabilty: Ease of transition, low cost of Linux, keeps ticker plant off the grid for now.
March 7, 2005... The Boston Stock Exchange (BSE) knows that mere seconds of downtime could mean the loss of substantial sums of money for the more than 200 broker-dealers it serves, so it's in the process of upgrading its main ticker plant system to a...

Forex Fraud Festers in Definitional Limbo.
March 7, 2005... A little-noticed court decision may be providing aid and comfort to boiler rooms that solicit customers to trade in off-exchange foreign currency futures contracts (forex), often using late-night TV infomercials, telemarketing campaigns and the...

Q&A With Shanghai's Zhongsu Chen.(Interview)
March 7, 2005... This week, officials from the Shanghai Stock Exhange (SSE) are expected to attend the Globalization 6 conference in New York to talk about the future of the Chinese securities industry and its role in Asia and the world. Securities...

Bridging the Pond: Stepped-up international activity focuses on regulatory convergence.
March 14, 2005... U.S. and European industry organizations and regulators have been meeting together over the past several months to discuss ways of increasing cross-border cooperation and smoothing out areas where friction exists. Regulatory convergence has...

Rogue Fund Hid in Plain Sight.
March 14, 2005... The recent collapse of Florida hedge fund KL Financial reveals the story of a hedge fund that, far from stalking investors from the fringes of the industry, conducted its business through some of the industry's most reputable financial firms....

The International GAAP Gap.(generally accepted accounting standards)(standards of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS))(Convergence between IFRS and GAAP)(FAS 133)(IAS 39)
March 14, 2005... "Convergence between IFRS and GAAP is complex, but by 2007 we hope to have major differences all resolved, and anything remaining will be minor," said Tom Jones, vice chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), to an...

The Lion in Winter.
March 14, 2005... Awise friend is fond of saying that the language of global business will soon be, not English, but English as a second languagea lingua franca often not native to anyone in the conversation, and less likely to be so going forward. Last week's...

The Other Reason to Know Your Customer.(retail financial services industry)
March 14, 2005... Plenty of bad news has hit the retail investing industry recently: market timing and late trading of mutual funds, market timing of mutual funds that underlie variable annuities, excessive churning of client accounts, and the bias of brokerage...

At Harvard, Hard Words on New Rules.
March 14, 2005... On March 7, some notable industry participants and regulators submitted their views on capital markets regulation to a cross-examination by Harvard Law School professor Hal S. Lott, director of the law school's program in international...

ISE Sees Cool Returns From IPO on NYSE.(International Securities Exchange)(initial public offering)(New York Stock Exchange)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... The International Securities Exchange issued its initial public offering last week and commenced trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 9. The stock, listed under the symbol "ISE," was priced at $18 per share. The company offered...

Reuters Spins Off Extranet Experts.(Reuters Group PLC)
March 14, 2005... BT Group announced the purchase of Radianz from Reuters last week in a deal that instantly makes BT over into a major financial services extranet provider and gives Radianz a new parent intent on using its considerable financial muscle to push...

Thain: U.S. Markets Behind Europe, More Consolidation Needed.(hybrid market)
March 14, 2005... U.S. markets are behind their European counterparts and need to consolidate further, said CEO of the New York Stock Exchange John Thain last week during the opening panel of Globalisation 6, the Hewlett-Packard Exchange and Clearing Forum, held...

"Thain in His Own Words".
March 14, 2005... On customer demands: "One of the things that I said when I joined was I was going to refocus on the customers of the NYSE.... I spent a lot of time over the first year meeting with and talking to the customers of the exchange, and I think this...

SEC Defines Nationally Recognized' Credit Rating Agency.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
March 14, 2005... The Securities and Exchange Commission voted on March 3 to propose a rule that would define for the first time what is meant by the "nationally recognized statistical rating organization" (NRSRO) designation for credit rating agencies. But...

Judge Deems DTCC Production Sufficient.(EagleTech Communications Inc)(Depository Trust and Clearing Corp.)
March 14, 2005... A New York state judge has ruled that the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) need only produce trading records it had initially offered to provide to EagleTech Communications to determine whether brokerage firm Bryn Mawr Investment Group...

Canada Mulls Soft-Dollar Regulations.
March 14, 2005... If industry comment on a white paper concerning best execution released last month is any indication, Canadian regulators could soon tighten their soft-dollar commission regulations, cribbing a page from the book of their American and British...

FinCEN's Crystal Ball.(Financial Crimes Enforcement Network)
March 14, 2005... The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's newly released strategic plan for the fiscal years 20062008 is attracting intense scrutiny as the industry attempts to determine whether it amounts to a revision, an expansion or a scaling back of the...

Cross-Border AML Compliance Starts at Home.(anti money laundering)
March 14, 2005... E ven before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., anti-money laundering (AML) was a global project for firms that did business across borders and time zones. Now, post-Sept. 11, what was an already complex international issue...

Vhayu's Supersonic Search.(Vhayu Technologies)(patent for real-time financial search engine)(Vhayu Velocity)
March 14, 2005... With the increasing pace of electronic trading, financial firms these days need to process ever-growing quantities of market data in real time. Vhayu Technologies is securing a stake in that market with a recently announced patent for a...

Street Firms Root Out Spyware in Their Midst.
March 14, 2005... It's every financial firm's worst nightmarea program hidden somewhere within a corporate network that collects passwords, customer information and other sensitive data. That data will then be used by criminalshackers, the Russian mafia or drug...

A Spyware Bestiary.(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... Spyware is any software that communicates over a user's Internet connection in the background without their knowledge or explicit permission, either for a harmless or a malicious purpose. Spyware can come in a number of forms: * Adware:...

Q&A With Magnus Bcker.(Interview)
March 14, 2005... At the Globalization 6 conference in New York last week, OMX president and CEO Magnus Bcker sat down with Securities Industry News for a one-on-one conversation about regulatory convergence, consolidation and cross-border cooperation. OMX...

Globalization Tops Futures Agenda: Asia marts are courted as regulator calls for rational international rules.(Derivative trading in global environment)
March 21, 2005... Globalization emerged as a strong theme at the International Futures Industry Conference held by the Futures Industry Association (FIA) in Boca Raton, Fla. last week. Exchange and clearing executives from all over the world discussed their...

Selling the Eurozone on DMA.(icubic introduces iQbonds suite)
March 21, 2005... Recent news from icubic, a Frankfurt-headquartered European fixed-income e-trading solutions provider, highlights both the increasing interest in direct market access products on the part of banks and the expansion of the DMA phenomenon to the...

Ofac Analysts on the Move.(Office of Foreign Assets Control)
March 21, 2005... The Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) is getting set to transfer 23 analysts over to a new intelligence division within the main department, possibly with a view toward consolidating this function with related ones within the Treasury...

Squawk Boxes & Black Boxes.(Security industry practice highlighted)(Editorial)
March 21, 2005... Readers may have noticed how Bruce Hammond's weekly cartoon--we call it "The SIN Zone"--has livened up our pages lately. Working with the veteran graphic funnyman provides a nice break from the editorial routine, and imposes little creative...

When Two Won't Tango.(two-factor authentication of E*TRADE Financial Corp.)
March 21, 2005... Last week, Counterpane Internet Security CTO--and big-time Internet security expert--Bruce Schneier fired off a blog entry heard around the world. While E-Trade was beginning to roll out two-factor authentication by providing little...

Inet Drops ACT: In expansion bid, rolls out Rash with all deliberate speed.
March 21, 2005... Gearing up for an effort to expand its liquidity pool and market share, the electronic marketplace Inet ATS has recently made moves to shed the clunkier parts of its legacy and move the more innovative aspects front and center. Inet users...

Monte Titoli Agrees to Shaping of Guvvie Trades.(Italian government bonds)
March 21, 2005... Even as the fate of Italy's electronic bond trading platform, MTS, is hashed out by Euronext and Borsa Italiana, a group of Italy's largest primary dealers and custodian banks have concluded several months of debate with the Borsa...

SS&C Makes Plans for Financial Models.(SS and C Technologies Inc., acquisitions)
March 21, 2005... Now that Financial Models Co. (FMC) has agreed to a union with SS&C Technologies in exchange for C$17.70 per share in cash, the winning bidder is touting its rationale for the deal and offering a small glimpse at the road ahead. The U.S....

Three Gee Whiz: WSTA previews next-gen network applications.(Wall Street Technology Association's Wireless, VoIP and Presence: Integrating New Solutions in a Legacy IT Environment seminar)
March 21, 2005... Presenters at "Wireless, VoIP and Presence: Integrating New Solutions in a Legacy IT Environment," a Wall Street Technology Association (WSTA) seminar held last week in New York, did their best to convince Wall Street firms that acquiring the...

The New Industrial Revolution: Broker-dealers under pressure to replace humans with black boxes.(Advanced Execution Strategies, Algorithmic Trading & Direct Market Access conference)
March 21, 2005... Algorithmic trading, once the bastion of brainy, tech-savvy hedge funds, is going mainstream. Increasingly, broker-dealers are offering algorithmic trading applications to their buy-side clients, partly to lower costs and partly to...

Outsourcing VoIP.(analysis)
March 21, 2005... I miss my Internet telephone system. I used to be able to get copies of my voicemails as e-mail attachments. I had free call forwarding, free caller ID and free three-way calling. I used to be able to take my telephone on the road with me, plug...

Network Handoff: Q&A With Matt Fox of Savvis.(Savvis Communications Corp.)(Interview)
March 21, 2005... Matt Fox, the former program manager of the SwiftNet FIX Service, has joined Savvis Communications, a global IT networking utility, as the newly appointed head of financial services. Fox will be in charge of the company's financial services...

Protecting Our Financial Infrastructure.(analysis)(Industry Overview)
March 21, 2005... The financial services industry's experience in the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the resulting dislocation in much of New York's financial district showed the extent to which such a disaster can...

Nasdaq Cuts Milliseconds From Data Delivery.(Nasdaq Stock Market enhanced its debugging software TotalView)
March 21, 2005... The Nasdaq Stock Market announced March 7 that it has enhanced TotalView, its data product, in order to improve trading performance and deliver information faster to traders and investors. Nasdaq implemented a streamlined process of...

Bear Stearns Taps GemStone for Data Caching.(GemStone Systems for GemFire 3.5)(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... Bear Stearns has become the first brokerage to tap GemFire 3.5, an enterprisewide data caching platform for financial services from software vendor GemStone Systems. GemFire was installed in the brokerage's program trading unit last...

HP Spotlights Exchange Clientele.(Hewlett-Packard Co.)
March 21, 2005... At a Best Practices Day held March 10 at New York's Plaza Hotel as part of Hewlett-Packard's Globalisation 6 conference, HP spotlighted a series of customer case studies in which users described how they built their market systems and addressed...

Q&A With Nybot's Shoenhut and Bass.(Fred W. Schoenhut and Steven W. Bass of New York Board of Trade)(Interview)
March 21, 2005... The New York Board of Trade (Nybot) was one of several exchanges to hold an informal "InformationXchange" session at the Futures Industry Association conference last week in Boca Raton, Fla., where it outlined its recent accomplishments and...

Algo Everywhere.(Credit Suisse First Boston is in deals with Thomson Financial to expand algorithmic trading system)
March 21, 2005... Continuing to expand the reach of its algorithmic trading system, Credit Suisse First Boston today is announcing a new deal with Thomson Financial. CSFB's Advanced Execution Services (AES) suite of algorithmic tools is now available through...

Reg NMS vote approaches: Assailed in committee, trade-through rule thought likely to pass.(Securities and Exchange Commission votes on regulation national market system)
March 28, 2005... As Securities Industry News was the first to report last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission is set to take a final vote on April 6 on Regulation NMS, the commission's ambitious and long-debated package of structural reforms of the...

Another Barrier Falls in China.
March 28, 2005... Last year, China was one of the few countries that still prohibited its banks from diversifying into other financial areas, such as mutual funds or insurance. That law changed in December, and last month an official decree went out,...

SunGard unbound.(impending acquisition of SunGard Data Systems Inc.)
March 28, 2005... The announcement last week that several top private equity firms are closing in on acquiring SunGard Data Systems is but the most dramatic example of a trend that has been gathering momentum over the past year. For dealmakers, the...

Letter From Europe.(about the battle for acquisition of London Stock Exchange)
March 28, 2005... The ongoing battle to acquire the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has turned into some pretty good theater. And why not? All the elements are there. Strong characters, powerful ambitions, unexpected twists and countless subplots. It's hard to...

The End of History and the Last Trading System: Fukuyama Comes to Market Reg.(Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man)
March 28, 2005... In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published his famous panegyric to the historical inevitability of market democracy: The End of History and the Last Man. In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the European Union brought Fukuyama to the...

Getting Demonstrative With Users.
March 28, 2005... I don't usually look at online demos since, as a technology writer, I like to fool myself into thinking that I already know how to do everything. But this week, I've been browsing online brokerage and banking sites and checking out the demos....

Non-U.S. Clients: S&P Fee Model Is Window Dressing'.(Standard & Poor's Corp.)
March 28, 2005... Standard & Poor's decision to offer a usage-based model for non-U.S. financial institutions that request identification numbers for North American securities from the Cusip Service Bureau (CSB) is being viewed by European financial institutions...

Transfer Agents Investigated for Conflict of Interest.
March 28, 2005... While most of the headline-grabbing probes of corruption in the securities industry have focused on illegal trading activities, the activities of transfer agents are now being placed under a microscope as well. The Securities and Exchange...

HedgeStreet Signs Agreement With CCorp.(Clearing Corp.)
March 28, 2005... HedgeStreet, a financial market that lets online retail investors trade financial instruments based on economic events, entered into an agreement with Clearing Corp. (CCorp) designed to enable institutions to trade HedgeStreet products in the...

AXA Tests Blend of Wireless, VoIP.(AXA Financial Inc., voice over internet protocol)
March 28, 2005... New York-based AXA Financial is testing wireless Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications in regional sales offices as a part of plans to converge its voice and data applications. The firm will stop using traditional telephone equipment...

Nasdaq: Mixed Message on Connectivity Fee.(Nasdaq Stock Market Inc.)
March 28, 2005... The Nasdaq and its Brut ECN affiliate recently announced new port connectivity fees for downloading real-time trade-related data, beginning April 1. The Nasdaq is reportedly still debating internally, however, where port connectivity actually...

Dark Fiber Steps Out of the Shadows.
March 28, 2005... During the dot-com boom, telecom companies were laying fiber optic lines like crazy, in expectation of a bandwidth explosion that never came. Some of that fiber was never used, never lit up by high-speed optical communications. It stayed dark....

CBF Adds Overnight Settlement Cycle.(Clearstream Banking Frankfurt)
March 28, 2005... Clearstream Banking Frankfurt's decision to add a new real-time overnight cycle in the wee hours of the morning for processing German securities transactions will allow CBF members more settlement opportunities with each other and with...

STP Maven Steve Crosby Joins TowerGroup.(straight-through processing)
March 28, 2005... Financial technology veteran and straight-through processing (STP) advocate Steven Crosby has joined TowerGroup, the Needham, Mass.-based IT consultancy. An announcement was made last week at a session of the International Securities...

In Swaps, the Message Is the Medium: ISITC, AMF will develop ISO-compliant messages for automated trading.(International Standards Association for Institutional Trade Communication, Asset Managers Forum, International Organization for Standardization)
March 28, 2005... Does the securities industry need another messaging standard? Once it arrives, what will market penetration be? Leaving the best-laid plans of well-intentioned people aside, will it compete with existing standards simply because it offers a...

PHLX to boot up e-PBOT this summer.(Philadelphia Stock Exchange Inc., Philadelphia Board of Trade)
March 28, 2005... This summer, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange will migrate its PHLX XL electronic options trading platform to the Philadelphia Board of Trade (PBOT), the exchange's futures-trading subsidiary, said Meyer "Sandy" Frucher, chairman and CEO of the...

Pipeline Drills for Dark Liquidity'.(Pipeline Trading Systems' deal with Electronic Specialists Inc.)
March 28, 2005... Hedge funds and other firms will be able to access hidden liquidity in the market and make anonymous trades through a greater range of systems, thanks to a new deal between Pipeline Trading Systems and Electronic Specialist (ESP). The two...

ITG, ESP Team Up.(Investment Technology Group collaborates with Electronic Specialists Inc.)
March 28, 2005... Investment Technology Group (ITG), a provider of technology-based equity trading and transaction research services to institutional investors, announced a collaboration this month with Electronic Specialist (ESP) to provide greater flexibility...

Tensions Under the Surface at CMFA Hearing.(Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000)
March 28, 2005... Robust merger talk and increased electronic trading have foreshadowed big changes for the futures markets, including consolidations that span asset classes and cross borders. Yet on a wintry day of testimony on Capitol Hill earlier this month,...

UNX and Macgregor form strategic partnership.
March 28, 2005... UNX, an institutionally focused agency brokerage providing advanced electronic trading solutions and premium services, will partner with Macgregor, a financial technology provider servicing the global investment community, to deliver UNX's...

SunGard: The Sum of the Parts.(SunGard Data Systems Inc.'s business restructuring plans)
March 28, 2005... Last October, SunGard Data Systems announced a plan to spin off its disaster recovery business, a $1.2 billion-in-revenues unit known as Availability Services. "The spinoff will permit separate investment decisions about these two...

How BNY Prepares for the Worst.(Bank of New York)
March 28, 2005... The Bank of New York will open a production center for securities settlement in Tennessee with staff of about 100 by the end of the year--part of a unique contingency scheme to mitigate risk and satisfy regulatory requirements for "core"...