Securities Industry News articles from May 2003

Securities Industry News archives from May 2003

Nasdaq Seeks Uniform Rules.
May 5, 2003... Nasdaq has petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue uniform trading rules for the fragmented Nasdaq universe and to order other markets trading its stocks to better share the regulatory burden. The petition for rulemaking...

Probe: ECN Opportunity?(New York Stock Exchange investigation into specialists' activity may help weaken trade-through rule)
May 5, 2003... The New York Stock Exchange's recent probe into its specialists' activity has bolstered electronic markets' hopes for regulatory reforms that would open up trading of listed stocks to ECNs. In particular, the ECNs are hoping the...

Risk Management Stalls Clearing in Hong Kong.
May 5, 2003... Despite more than two years of planning and nine months of industry consultation, the rollout of correspondent clearing in Hong Kong-originally due in the third quarter-has been delayed as potential clearers, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing...

Cracking the Codes: Reuters plans to license securities ID numbers.
May 5, 2003... Reuters Group Plc is set to throw its hat into the increasingly crowded securities coding ring, when it announces later this week at the Securities Industry Association's operations conference in Boca Raton, Fla. that it will license its...

Jury Finds E-Trade, EveryPath Stole Tech Secrets.
May 5, 2003... The maxim, "You reap what you sow" hit close to home for E-Trade Financial, following a jury decision late last month that it "willfully and maliciously" misappropriated trade secrets from Ajaxo. The jury decision April 25 concerns a suit...

As Business Changes, Options Chiefs Wary of Retaining Specialists.(Panel Discussion)
May 5, 2003... The four floor-based options exchanges in the United States are embracing hybrid or remote-access solutions. But whether this will ensure the presence of specialists across five markets-and thus the survival of these exchanges-remains to be...

Is Nasdaq Mulling Exit From NQLX?
May 5, 2003... Nasdaq, under a new management, will be reassessing all of its operations, which may include exiting the Nasdaq Liffe Markets (NQLX) joint venture it set up two years ago with Euronext to trade single-stock futures, industry sources said. ...

BNY Finalizes Pershing Integration.(Bank of New York )
May 5, 2003... The Bank of New York last Thursday completed its acquisition of Pershing, creating the largest clearing firm in the world in terms of correspondent clearing relationships. When the acquisition was announced in January, it was already...

BOTCC Pursues Deals in Wake of CBOT's Departure.(Board of Trade Clearing Corp)
May 5, 2003... While the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange iron out the details of their clearing agreement, the CBOT's former clearinghouse, the Board of Trade Clearing Corp., is moving ahead with its own plans to stay afloat, BOTCC...

TowerGroup: IT Slump Set to Improve...Slowly.
May 5, 2003... IT spending in the securities industry in North America is expected to decline 4.8 percent this year and won't stabilize until 2005, but "the worst is behind us," said Robert Hegarty, VP of securities investment at TowerGroup. The...

AML Customer ID Rules Finalized.
May 5, 2003... The final and long-awaited anti-money-laundering (AML) customer identification requirements released last week by the U.S. Treasury Department will not force firms to verify identities on existing accounts nor trigger re-verification of...

Basel II May Impact Securities Biz More Than Expected.
May 5, 2003... The Basel II accord-which would require that financial services firms set aside capital reserves to ensure against credit and operational risk-is likely to extend to securities firms as well as to banks, TowerGroup analysts said last week. ...

No E-Mail Relief in New Books-and-Records Rules.
May 5, 2003... Strengthened books-and-records rules 17a-3 and 17a-4 of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went into effect Friday with specific data and documentation requirements. The mandates do not, however, revise or further specify the types of...

New Wachovia Taps Thomson.
May 5, 2003... The new Wachovia Securities-which combines the brokerage arms of Wachovia Corp. and Prudential Financial-has tapped Thomson Financial in a deal to provide market data and the vendor's Beta Systems brokerage transaction processing arm to support...

DTCC Launches OTC Derivatives Matching Service.(Depository Trust & Clearing Corp)
May 5, 2003... The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) has entered the derivatives STP arena, announcing the launch of a real-time electronic matching service for credit default swaps and signing up the industry's top three players-J.P. Morgan Chase,...

Euroclear Tells Chinese Depository: Look Westward.
May 5, 2003... International depository Euroclear has recommended that China's central depository adopt a more sophisticated central counterparty service and adhere to simultaneous delivery-vs.-payment settlement practices as part of a broader revamping of...

QFIIs Race for China's A-Share Market.(qualified foreign institutional investor )
May 5, 2003... After securing final approval on March 14 to act as custodians for foreign institutions by China's Security and Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and the State Administration for Foreign Exchange (Safe), custodian banks Standard Chartered, HSBC and...

Moneyline Telerate Revamps Under New Chief Exec.
May 5, 2003... Moneyline Telerate is refocusing under the management of new CEO David Walsh, and has received $30 million in additional funding from Bank One Equity Partners to develop a new ticker plant and support organization. The vendor is also laying off...

FIX 4.4 Finished, ISO XML Conversion Just Beginning.
May 5, 2003... FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) last week released FIX 4.4, which will likely be the last version of the protocol before FIX and Swift begin the convergence of their message types to a single standard. New functionality in FIX 4.4. includes support...

Wonders of Soap: A Dream for Users, Nightmare for Vendors.
May 5, 2003... Everybody and his brother has a different definition of Web services, but it's really very simple: Web services are built with Soap (Simple Object Access Protocol). If it ain't got Soap, it's not a Web service. It's something a vendor conjured...

As Standards Evolve, Platforms Improve.
May 5, 2003... As Web services standards evolve, so do the platforms that Wall Street firms use to develop them. This year, Microsoft, IBM, BEA and Sun Microsystems are expanding on their basic Web services development frameworks to offer support for the...

Help Abounds For Users.
May 5, 2003... All the major consulting firms have invested in the new technology, training programmers, setting up dedicated development centers, and forging ties with technology vendors. The goal? To become attractive to Wall Street firms moving to a...

Web Services Transforming Thomson Offerings.
May 5, 2003... Bob Lamoureux-co-author of the FIX protocol and former CTO for WorldStreet-joined Thomson Financial last fall as VP of technical strategy for the investment management group to develop a Web services platform for the vendor. In his new role,...

Web Services: The Second Wave of the Web'.
May 5, 2003... Web services will have a more significant impact on companies' bottom lines than what they've achieved so far by simply having Web sites, said Steve Holbrook, program director for emerging e-business standards at IBM. Holbrook, who is...

SunGard Offers Risk Functionality Via Web.
May 5, 2003... SunGard Trading & Risk Systems last year rolled out the Panorama KnowledgeFactory (PKF), a product that wraps the Panorama market and credit risk module in Web services and can be used to wrap other back-end systems in Web services as well. Now...

MDDL.org Pushes XML for Corporate Actions.
May 5, 2003... In response to demand from vendors and potential users, MDDL.org, the organization that is managing the development of the XML-based market data definition language (MDDL), is seeking to standardize corporate actions data within MDDL. The...

IDS Wins $8.5 Million in First Venture Capital Round.(Integrated Decision Systems)
May 5, 2003... Integrated Decision Systems, a Los Angeles-based portfolio management and wrap account management software vendor, has received its first round of venture capital funding for $8.5 million, company officials said last week. The company was...

Sources: Singapore Nixing Matching.
May 5, 2003... The Singapore Exchange's plans to develop a central pre-matching utility (CPM) have been indefinitely postponed, say industry sources in Singapore. In early October 2002, the SGX issued a request for information to technology vendors to...

Hedge Fund Transparency Could Bring IT Out in Open.
May 5, 2003... Talk about hedge fund regulation and its potential impact on technology requirements has been in the air for several years, but it intensified significantly last month when newly appointed Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William...

Hand-Helds Dominate Big Board's Trading Floor.
May 5, 2003... Until last fall, traders who wanted to place complex orders with the specialists on the New York Stock Exchange floor had to manually write down the information and hand over little pieces of paper-even traders who had long switched over to...

CBOE Also Embracing New Mobile Technology.
May 5, 2003... The NYSE isn't alone in using hand-helds on the trading floor. At the Chicago Board Options Exchange, 97 percent of trades come from the hand-helds, according to spokesman Gary Compton. Of those devices, 85 percent are proprietary models,...

Trema Hires to Target Buy Side.
May 5, 2003... Trema has hired two executives to develop the vendor's buy-side business in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, following the launch of Trema Finance Kit 6.0 for asset managers, the firm said last week. The Stockholm-based vendor appointed...

Eurex Accepts First Bond ETF As Collateral for Netting.
May 5, 2003... In a bid to increase its market share, Eurex is offering customers a cheaper method for netting risk on derivatives transactions and treating a fixed-income exchange-traded fund (ETF) as collateral, a first for clearing. Starting on June...

Globe Tax Services Hires McGill for Marketing.
May 5, 2003... Globe Tax Services, a New York City-based tax reclamation service provider, has tapped Ross McGill, former managing director of Goal in London, as director of marketing. Based in the London, McGill will be responsible for extending Globe...

Geneos Wealth Management Signs Deal With StatementOne.
May 5, 2003... Geneos Wealth Management will integrate StatementOne's Web-based consolidated portfolio accounting and performance reporting solution into its infrastructure to improve back-office accuracy, but also to help the Denver-based firm build out its...

Citisoft Launches Service For Risk and Performance.
May 5, 2003... London-based investment management consultancy Citisoft has launched a risk and performance analysis service meant to give asset managers an idea of how good or bad their staff and their systems are doing for clients, as well as measure the...

Tokyo Futures Exchange Moves to Liffe Connect.
May 5, 2003... The Tokyo International Financial Futures Exchange (Tiffe) last week completed the migration of its derivatives products to Liffe Connect, Euronext.liffe's trading platform. Tiffe's products now are also processed on a system supported by...

LSE Unveils Hybrid System for Less-Liquid Stocks.
May 5, 2003... The London Stock Exchange last week confirmed plans to extend its Sets electronic order book to several dozen midcap U.K. and Irish stocks currently traded over the Seaq quote-driven trading system in a hybrid model. The new system, called...

Thomson Offers Database Conversion Tools.
May 5, 2003... Thomson Financial has launched a set of database conversion tools to streamline upgrades of Portia, the vendor's portfolio management system, and Oneva Trade EQ, the equity trade order management system. The tools were developed to give...

Baruch Panelists Make Case for NYSE Changes.
May 5, 2003... Addressing problems related to the New York Stock Exchange and creating a level playing field were among the topics raised at a Baruch College conference on institutional trading-related issues last week. Bernie Madoff, chairman of Bernard...

State Street Buys Irish Venture.
May 5, 2003... State Street Corp. last week expanded its foothold in the Irish fund administration and custody arena by acquiring the remaining 50 percent of a joint venture it owned with Bank of Ireland. The deal comes on the heels of State Street's...

Offshoring' Patni Buys Reference.
May 5, 2003... Bombay-based software development provider Patni is announcing today that it has acquired Reference, a Boston-based consultant focused on the portfolio, risk management and tax optimization software needs of the buy side. The merger...

Guvvie Bond Banks Drop Dual BCP.
May 12, 2003... J.P. Morgan Chase and the Bank of New York will not pursue a contingency plan to mutually back up their operations to ensure that settlement in the $1.3 trillion government bond market runs uninterrupted amid a catastrophe or outage. ...

End of an Era: Nasdaq president heads to Citigroup as top counsel.
May 12, 2003... Nasdaq President Rick Ketchum, a former candidate for the top job at the electronic stock market, is stepping down to become general counsel at Citigroup, whose Salomon Smith Barney (SSB) brokerage unit recently was part of a record regulatory...

Lawmaker Urges SEC To Decide on Nasdaq.
May 12, 2003... A California lawmaker has urged Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson to address Nasdaq's exchange registration application, stranded in regulatory limbo for the past two years amid a complex market structure debate. ...

SIA Renews STP Call to Buy Side, Groups.
May 12, 2003... The Securities Industry Association is seeking greater support for a global straight-through processing framework this year, specifically targeting the Group of 30 (G30), as well as standards bodies like ISITC-IOA, and groups representing the...

Access Issue Hints at Broader SEC Problems.
May 12, 2003... When Canadian and European market participants talk about the Securities and Exchange Commission's seeming disinterest in granting direct access to foreign trading technology in the United States, or in entering into a serious dialogue on new...

Richards: Culture of Compliance' Pivotal For Securities Firms.
May 12, 2003... Amid the scandals and flood of regulations confronting Wall Street firms these days, the subject of compliance has become pivotal to firms' success (and, indeed, survival). In this climate, Lori Richards, director of compliance inspections and...

Mind-Bending Matrix Sorts Hedge Funds.
May 12, 2003... As investors-and regulators-begin to look closely at hedge fund operations, IT firms are coming up with new solutions, but despite their claims, they have a way to go to meet the needs of the growing $600 billion market, according to a study...

Swift Faces Sibos Decisions.
May 12, 2003... Pressured by market players, Swift has set June and September timetables for whether to proceed with its annual Sibos conference in Singapore the week of Oct. 20. The final vote on whether Sibos can take place will be made on June 27, and...

Tech Firms Urged to Walk the Walk' on Certificates.
May 12, 2003... In a new effort to get rid of physical stock certificates, the Securities Industry Association is challenging executives at the big publicly traded tech firms to prove their commitment to their products and lead the charge in eradicating their...

Trade-Through, Intermarket System Under Attack.
May 12, 2003... The trade-through rule, which is at the heart of the centralized National Market System (NMS) concept, came under fire last week as academics and market participants debated how to best serve investors in the IT age. "The Securities and...

ESF Seeks Tight Timeframe on Processing Changes.
May 12, 2003... The European Securities Forum, a group of securities processing professionals from 23 of the world's largest banks, last week tried to resurrect its lagging image by releasing a nuts-and-bolts approach to the future of post-trade processing in...

Reuters Pins U.S. Expansion Hopes on Bridgestation.
May 12, 2003... Bridgestation has taken a central role in Reuters' product arsenal for the United States, with the vendor looking to expand the product's buy-side user base into research and portfolio management, institutional fixed income, and sell-side sales...

Harborside+ Links to Nasdaq's Liquidity Tracker.
May 12, 2003... Harborside+ has inked a deal with e-Xchange Advantage (eXA), under which orders from Nasdaq's Liquidity Tracker block trading facility will be routed to the trading system. eXA built the Liquidity Tracker technology and is licensing it to...

Bloomberg Targets European OMS Arena.
May 12, 2003... Bloomberg, which rolled out a sell-side equity trade order management system last year, is aiming to create a global product by adding connectivity to Euronext, the Deutsche Borse's Xetra and the London Stock Exchange, and is planning to bring...

Nomura Joins Equilend.
May 12, 2003... Nomura Securities has become the first Asia-Pacific client to join Equilend as the electronic securities borrowing and lending platform undergoes an expansion of functionality. Equilend-founded by Barclays Global Investors, Bear Stearns,...

Our World In Numbers.
May 12, 2003... 2003 First-Quarter Statistical Report The following is Securities Industry News' 2003 First-Quarter Statistical Report, spotlighting the quarterly volumes of automated trading platforms, depositories and clearing corporations, exchanges and...

Euroclear Offers Automated Processing to Fidelity.
May 12, 2003... International depository Euroclear said last week that distributors of Fidelity's Luxembourg Funds-the most frequently processed funds family on its FundSettle platform-can now benefit from automated same-day processing. Fund distributors...

I-Deal Lands Prebon Yamane Deal.
May 12, 2003... London-based I-Deal Data Systems has been tapped by the Prebon Technology Group to replace a Web-based system that provides Prebon Yamane's data to its customers. The system, currently being rolled out, will also service internal data...

Merrill Lynch Signs Deal With Radianz for Connectivity.
May 12, 2003... Merrill Lynch has tapped Radianz to be its "global provider of choice" for IP-based business-to-business network connectivity. Merrill is using Radianznet to take services from content and information providers such as stock exchanges, and...

Calypso Technology Debuts New Linux-Based Software.
May 12, 2003... San Francisco-based Calypso Technology has adapted its trading and processing software to run on Linux. Calypso, which has been running the software on Linux internally for some time, is responding to the growing demand of its customers, a...

Knight Trading Sets Up Electronic Trading Team.
May 12, 2003... Knight Trading Group recently appointed a veteran trading technology expert to head up the Nasdaq market-maker's new electronic trading team. Mony Rueven joins Knight as SVP for electronic trading, after spending two decades building and...

Moneyline Telerate Picks AKA For Callable Agency Pricing.
May 12, 2003... Moneyline Telerate has licensed a new product from Andrew Kalotay Associates (AKA), which enables traders to value 10,000-plus agency bonds in near real-time, according to AKA. The service combines real-time data with the ability to compute...

ISE Plans Link to Business Continuity Network.
May 12, 2003... The International Securities Exchange (ISE) will link to the Securities Industry Automation Corp.'s Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI) this month via the connections and services of Con Edison Communications (CEC), the companies...

Hyperfeed to Begin VRXML Reporting to Big Board.
May 12, 2003... HyperFeed, the Chicago-based market data technology provider, has become the first vendor to employ VRXML, the vendor reporting extensible markup language developed and supported by the New York Stock Exchange and the Financial Information...

BNY Expands Presence in European, Japanese Markets.
May 12, 2003... The Bank of New York last week officially launched its previously announced global custody alliance with ING Bank and expanded its triparty repo business in the Japanese market, administering the first onshore deal under Japanese law and...

Buttonwood Debuts Data Service.
May 12, 2003... The Buttonwood Tree Group, a London-based technology consultancy focused on the financial markets, has launched a market data outsourcing service called Market Data Optimisation (MDO). The service includes day-to-day operational management...

FXall Brings More News, Instant Messaging on Board.
May 12, 2003... FXall, the bank-centric foreign exchange platform, has tapped Internet content vendor Communicator's Hub IM, a news and instant messaging system to connect FXall's global client base of more than 500 institutions and thousands of users. ...

Virt-x Launches CCP Via LCH, X-Clear.
May 12, 2003... Virt-x, the pan-European securities exchange, last week launched its long-awaited central counterparty (CCP) service through an alliance between the London Clearing House and SIS SegaIntersettle's newly created x-Clear unit. The planned...

ITG's Posit Adds Five Crosses.
May 12, 2003... ITG's Posit, which currently has nine crosses during the day, is adding another five beginning tomorrow. The equity crossing system is also shortening the window of time during which a cross may happen from five minutes to one minute. With...

Citigroup Installs Custody System.
May 12, 2003... Citigroup Global Transaction Services, the bank's securities processing arm, is expected to announce today that it has completed the rollout of a new custody platform in 12 countries. The new system, designed in conjunction with Orbitech...

Exchange, Clearing Vet Kloet Fills COO Post at Fimat Group.
May 12, 2003... Thomas Kloet, the former CEO of the Singapore Exchange (SGX), has joined Fimat USA, a unit of Fimat Group, as chief operating officer. Fimat Group is a major global broker under the umbrella of French banking giant Societe Generale Group. ...

SEC May Reshape U.S. Markets.
May 19, 2003... The Securities and Exchange Commission last week released a concept paper that could lead to major changes in U.S. market structure and help regulators rule on Nasdaq's long-pending exchange registration application. The SEC's concept...

Hedging Regs: Registration, investor minimums, disclosure on the table.
May 19, 2003... Hedge fund players and the Securities and Exchange Commission squared off over the regulation of the $600 billion industry at a two-day roundtable conference held at the regulator's Washington, D.C. headquarters with industry participants...

E-Trade Wins Some, Loses Some in Court.
May 19, 2003... Developments in ongoing suits against E-Trade, including litigation stemming from the stock loan transaction that brought down MJK Clearing, have put the e-brokerage on the hook for nearly $23 million, but also relieved it from paying royalties...

Nasdaq Top Exec Revamp Continues.
May 19, 2003... Two more top Nasdaq executives left the electronic stock market last week as Robert Greifeld, formerly of SunGard Data Systems, became president and CEO of the aspiring electronic exchange. Bill Harts, EVP for corporate strategy, and Dean...

Short List Emerging for Step-In Guvvie Banks.
May 19, 2003... Even though no major U.S. commercial banks have come forward yet to volunteer as potential "step-in" banks prepared to take over one-half of the $1.3 trillion daily business of clearing domestic government securities should one of the two banks...

Rules Likely For Funds of Hedge Funds Programs.
May 19, 2003... The following article, written exclusively for Securities Industry News by Lester Wigler, president of Stamford, Conn.- based Credo, a financial and technology consultancy, focuses on how funds of hedge funds can meet potential Securities and...

Tech Burden Gains Montreal Relief.(Montreal Exchange is excused from filing independent review for 2002)
May 19, 2003... Generally speaking, there are very few positives about being overwhelmed. But for the Montreal Exchange, a major series of technology overhauls and upgrades has garnered them some relief from one of the industry's chronic burdens: paperwork....

Canada Surveys STP Progress.(straight-through-processing capabilities )(Brief Article)
May 19, 2003... The Canadian Securities Administrators, the national body made up of the chairs of Canada's provincial regulators, is attempting to evaluate the current straight-through-processing capabilities of market participants. Through the use of an...

Tullett Liberty to Automate Processing.(interdealer broker introduces Post:marker service)
May 19, 2003... London-based interdealer broker Tullett Liberty announced the launch of Post:marker last week, a straight-through-processing application designed to automate post-trade notifications or confirmations. The product will be available to Tullett...

Survey: Firms Slow to Automate Corporate Actions.
May 19, 2003... While many firms view automating corporate actions as a priority, few are actually close to implementing systems, according to a survey conducted by network provider Swift, London-based IT consultancy CityIQ and software vendor Smartstream. ...

Business Growth, Outsourcing, Security on CIOs' Minds.
May 19, 2003... How to grow your business in a tough economy, realize costs savings through outsourcing and keep your systems secure topped the agenda at this year's CIO Forum on Financial Services. Forget excuses, any company can grow in double-digits in...