Securities Industry News articles from May 2005

Securities Industry News archives from May 2005

Greifeld: Nasdaq as Global Brand.(Robert Greifeld)(Nasdaq Stock Market Inc.)
May 2, 2005... The frenzied period of innovation and competition in the trade execution industry, largely driven by the new technologies of the 1990s, is giving way to a wave of consolidation and integration in the markets themselves. Those technological...

The Data Czar: Who Needs It?
May 2, 2005... The world's largest financial institutions must manage increasingly enormous volumes of different kinds of information on the securities they trade, clear and settle, as well as on the counterparties with which they do business. The daily...

Reg NMS: The Other Shoe.
May 2, 2005... When it comes to the complex issues surrounding market data, Regulation NMS, as enacted last month in a 3-2 Securities and Exchange Commission vote, is almost as notable for what it did not include as for what it did. A fundamental...

Streams and Storms.
May 2, 2005... For months on end, Wall Streeters have been wringing their hands over markets that seem only to be moving sideways. But in their midst is a business that is booming, in terms of both volumes and technological energy. The growth is in data:...

Automating the Client Reporting Process.
May 2, 2005... As financial services organizations focus more of their attention on wealth management and high net worth customers, the issue of providing clients with a total view of their financial position is becoming more critical--and complex. Both...

Instinet's Ed Nicoll: Breaking Free.
May 2, 2005... In the flurry of transactions, announced April 22, that will make Instinet Group's Inet electronic market center part of Nasdaq Stock Market, Inet's parent is to remain intact under CEO Edward Nicoll. "We are excited by the opportunity to be...

G30 to Dissolve Monitoring Panel.(Group of Thirty Consultative Group on International Economic and Monetary Affairs)
May 2, 2005... The Group of Thirty Consultative Group on International Economic and Monetary Affairs (G30), an international advisory body of leaders from the private and public sectors and academia, will dissolve its global monitoring committee (GMC) after...

Concannon: Nasdaq Not the Loser in NMS Debate.(National market system)
May 2, 2005... Speaking at the Securities Industry Association's "Day on the Street" event for members of the financial media this month, Nasdaq's Chris Concannon, EVP for transaction services, reflected on the SEC's recent approval of the controversial...

FPL: Swift's Giovannini Recommendations Are Biased.(FIX Protocol Ltd)
May 2, 2005... When Swift released a draft report to the Giovannini Group on the consolidation of clearing and settlement standards in the European Union and solicited public comment (Securities Industry News, April 11), many predicted that the response from...

Ameritrade Backup Tapes Go Missing.
May 2, 2005... This hasn't been a good year for personal data security. LexisNexis and ChoicePoint, two information brokerage companies, admitted that data files of more than 455,000 consumers were compromised. Bank of America lost backup tapes containing...

IFX Spec Released With Fidelity Support.(Interactive Financial eXchange )
May 2, 2005... The Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum has released the latest draft version of the IFX specification, incorporating the first deliverables from the forum's branch-banking services working group. Version 1.7 is available for public...

Tech Tops To-Do List of Incoming Amex Exec.(American Stock Exchange)
May 2, 2005... Improving technology will be a top priority for the American Stock Exchange this year as it moves forward with a new trading platform and settles in with a new board of governors and a new chairman and CEO. The number-one goal will be...

CME FX on Reuters Adds Four More Clearing Firms.
May 2, 2005... The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Reuters have added four clearing firms to CME FX on Reuters--a partnership that enables Reuters and CME communities to engage in foreign exchange trading with one another. Calyon Financial, JP Morgan, Lehman...

Gas, Electric and GoldenSource: Will the industry ever agree on a common data-quality solution?
May 2, 2005... When New Yorkers think of a utility, they think of Con Edison or Keyspan Energy--and not always with great affection. But there is an increasing amount of talk in the financial services industry about creating a utility to generate, refine and...

Turbulent Times, Fast Databases: Fast markets, fat pipes, spilt-second decisions: Sometimes you have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are.
May 2, 2005... Blame the inexorable rise of program trading, or the hedge funds that are pushing their prime brokers and trading platforms to the limit, or just the millisecond-measured pace of modern securities markets: Transaction decisions are being made...

Managing Volume From the Lunatic Fringe.
May 2, 2005... Addressing reporters recently at Nasdaq's market site in midtown Manhattan, Christopher R. Concannon, the electronic market's executive vice president of transaction services, recounted how a data surge earlier this year caught him and other...

OMX's Anders Reveman: Open Platforms and Global Ambitions.
May 2, 2005... As part of an eight-year outsourcing contract inked in January 2002, the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) purchased OMX's Exigo--described as "the world's first central securities depository platform designed for a cross-border environment." SFE...

Calypso's Kishore Bopardikar: Riding Herd on Cross-Asset Risk.(Interview)
May 2, 2005... San Francisco-based Calypso Technology develops cross-asset, front-to-back trading and trade processing software systems for the likes of LCH.Clearnet, SemperMacro, Royal Bank of Scotland and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, whose securities...

This Week in the War on GIGO.(garbage in, garbage out)
May 2, 2005... Enterprisewide data integration and Regulation NMS compliance topped Financial Insight's list of the ten most urgent IT projects of 2005, according to an April press release announcing the consultancy's latest industry survey. The American...

Names in the News.
May 2, 2005... Representative Richard Baker, D-La., chairman of the House Capital Markets Subcommittee and an outspoken opponent of the SEC's recently passed Reg NMS, is reportedly discussing with Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Financial...

Winnipeg's William Hill: No Nostalgia for the Floor.(Winnipeg Commodity Exchange )(Interview)
May 2, 2005... Last December, the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange (WCE) in the Canadian grain belt province of Manitoba became the first commodity exchange in North America to take the leap of faith, abandoning its trading floor and converting to an...

Orc Software's Lindstrom: The First 100 Days.(Jonas Lindstrom )
May 2, 2005... Since taking the helm of Orc Software in December, Jonas Lindstrom has emphasized a continued focus on the Stockholm-based company's core business of market making, trading and risk management technology, which connects customers in 21...

Trading Technologies Sues the Man Group.
May 2, 2005... The patent wars over trading software are witnessing a major spring offensive. Trading Technologies (TT) announced in mid-April that it had been granted a patent from the European Patent Office for its Market Depth (MD) Trader order-entry...

Attack of the 64-Bit Server.
May 2, 2005... Last week's news that Microsoft--the last holdout--will soon start shipping 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP may signal the end of the 32-bit era in enterprise and personal computing. The numbers refer to the binary...

Liquidnet's SEC Relief; MarketAxess Advances.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
May 9, 2005... If first-quarter results from Liquidnet, an electronic block-trading platform for equities, and MarketAxess, an online marketplace for corporate bonds, are any indication, traders are bullish on electronic trading. Both firms boasted 20 percent...

Institutions Find EUSD Taxing.(European Union Savings Tax Directive)
May 9, 2005... Two months before the European Union Savings Tax Directive (EUSD)--a set of stringent guidelines on withholding tax for debt instruments and investment funds--takes effect, financial institutions across the U.K. and the Continent are scrambling...

Super-Sized.
May 9, 2005... On April 27--reportedly a lovely spring day in southern France--the Airbus A380 took off on its maiden flight as some 30,000 spectators, including politicians, celebrities and circus performers, watched and applauded. News media from around the...

Staying the Hybrid Course.
May 9, 2005... New York Stock Exchange chief technology officer Roger Burkhardt accepted an invitation months ago to be the keynote speaker for the Securities Industry Association's 32nd Annual Operations Conference. That was long before he or anybody else...

An MCI Ethernet Answers the CME's Global Call.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
May 9, 2005... The Chicago Mercantile Exchange needed to expand its network internationally. The selection process was not overly sophisticated: It looked at the geographical locations of customers and promising potential customers, then checked out the...

The Two-Year Itch: Hedge fund advisers consider loophole in registration rule.
May 9, 2005... As the February 2006 deadline approaches for hedge fund advisers to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, parties on both sides face growing unease about how--or even whether--the process is going to work. And there is ample...

Utility-Computing Play Bets Big on Blades.
May 9, 2005... Firms are well aware that pricing schedules for outsourced processing have been making them pay for unused capacity. It's as if the water company billed you for a full bathtub with each twist of the tap, whether you're hosing down a large dog...

Wire Transfers Trouble Treasury.
May 9, 2005... Obeying a mandate from the intelligence reform bill passed by Congress in December, the U.S. Treasury has begun pushing for access to millions of foreign banking and banking transfer records in an effort to track down terrorist financing. The...

Report: IT Spending to Tail Off Soon.
May 9, 2005... Information technology spending in the U.S. securities industry began to grow over the last two years, but the industry will actually curtail its IT investments in the years ahead, concludes a report by Celent Communications titled, "IT...

Orchestria Makes Its New York Debut.
May 9, 2005... A year ago, Orchestria was a British expatriate in New York, steadily gaining traction with a technology for enforcing compliance with electronic communications rules but unable to say much about its progress. Many of its customers, after all,...

APM: Who, What and Why.(active policy management)
May 9, 2005... Before internal e-mails reached the desk of Eliot Spitzer, there was Monica Lewinsky's hard drive. Lewinsky tried to wipe the disk clean before the feds could seize data on her home computer, but forensic experts were still able to retrieve her...

NYSE Mulls Options Once Again.(PCX Holdings)
May 9, 2005... For the New York Stock Exchange, its planned merger with Archipelago Holdings could land it more than an all-electronic trading platform care of Arca--it could also potentially bring the exchange back into the options game, a sector it entered...

MTS: Money or Love?
May 9, 2005... Will hard cash or political alliances win out in the takeover battle for MTS, the largest electronic trading platform for European sovereign debt? The contenders at this point are eSpeed, the embattled electronic bond trading arm of Cantor...

Bond Lobbies in Bid To Bridge Jurisdictions.
May 9, 2005... There is no shortage of financial services industry associations and lobbying groups floating around the European Union. Actually, "waiting around" might be more like it, since the complexities of implementing rules and regulations that satisfy...

China Announces Massive Privatization Plan.
May 9, 2005... The Chinese government has formally announced a plan to begin selling off state-owned shares, which today make up two-thirds of all outstanding equities. The announcement was made last week by the China Securities Regulatory Commission...

Do Fund Administrators Hedge on Asset Valuations?
May 9, 2005... Investors and regulators often charge that the valuation practices of hedge fund managers leave something to be desired. Even so, and despite a concerted campaign by the hedge fund sector to protest its demonization by the media, a recent...

CFTC Weighs In on Hedge Fund Effect.(Commodity Futures Trading Commission)
May 9, 2005... The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) released a study last month concluding that there is no link between price changes and hedge fund position changes in the natural gas market. The report supports the findings of a New York...

OMS Vendor Certifies Its FIX Connections.(Order management systems)(FIX Protocol Ltd)(Charles River Development )
May 9, 2005... Order management systems provider Charles River Development has completed FIX Protocol Ltd.'s (FPL) certification testing process, becoming the first OMS vendor and only the second firm in the market to achieve that milestone. Lehman Brothers...

Dutch Depository Automates Voluntary Actions.
May 9, 2005... Reflecting an industry trend, Euroclear Nederlands announced it will automate voluntary corporate actions reporting services, which typically involve the maneuvers associated with complex reorganizations. The Dutch central depository, part...

CCorp's Jaycobs Clears the Air.(Clearing Corp.)(Interview)
May 9, 2005... When Chicago's Clearing Corp. lost the Chicago Board of Trade, its bread and butter client, to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 2003, many industry observers thought it was on its last legs. Its winning bid for the U.S. clearing business of...

What Shadow Knows.(Shadow Financial )(Company Profile)
May 9, 2005... Shadow Financial may well be heading for a high-noon showdown with competitors in the trade-clearing space. Formed in late 1997, Shadow has been steadily building a client list of firms both large and small that prefer its clearing system to...

Putnam Addresses Trading Community.(Gerald Putnam says on merger of New York Stock Exchange and Archipelago Holdings)
May 9, 2005... When the merger between the New York Stock Exchange and Archipelago Holdings is done, the NYSE's hybrid trading model and Arca's electronic platform will both be preserved, leaving it up to investors to decide how they want to trade, said...

New Directions in Connection.(SHS Informationssysteme AG)
May 9, 2005... TowerGroup launched a European research and advisory service focused on banking and payments. "Coverage will include European universal banking and payments, including retail and wholesale banking, securities and investments, with a focus on...

Satyam, Citisoft Consummate Courtship.(Satyam Computer Services Ltd. to acquire )
May 9, 2005... Satyam Computer Services, India's fourth-largest technology consulting firm, said in late April that it will buy Citisoft, a specialized business consulting firm with investment management industry expertise. The price is $23 million over three...

Market Structure: Back to the Future.
May 16, 2005... What will markets look like in five years? Will one global electronic marketplace have emerged to swallow up exchanges throughout the world? Or will new exchanges have arisen to challenge the largest and oldest with cutting-edge technology? ...

Brussels Mulls See-Through Eurobonds.
May 16, 2005... Over the past decade, European bond dealers have resisted attempts by securities watchdogs to shift them from self-regulation to regulatory oversight, arguing successfully that bond buyers are mostly institutions that can look after themselves,...

Closing the Prop Shop.
May 16, 2005... E-Trade Financial Corp., which last week launched a formal takeover bid for rival Ameritrade Holdings Corp., has closed its proprietary trading unit, a midtown New York facility where employees traded for the firm's own account on the same...

Playing by the New Rules.
May 16, 2005... The reaction in Germany to Werner Seifert's resignation as the CEO of the Deutsche Borse and the departure of chairman Rolf Breuer was swift--and vicious. Powerful dissident shareholders--chief among them one U.S. and one U.K.-based hedge...

Authentication With a Light Touch for British Banking.
May 16, 2005... Increased security has become a major focus of many investment banks and other financial institutions as they face tougher regulations--and even threats of tough legislation--on safeguarding privacy and customer data, preventing identity theft...

Geithner's Global Agenda.(Timothy F. Geithner )
May 16, 2005... In his keynote address to a European Commission conference on cross-border integration of financial markets and transatlantic regulatory cooperation, held at New York's St. Regis Hotel in April, New York Federal Reserve Bank president Timothy...

Delays Dog Commission's Fund Agenda: Politics, flood of critical comments, could still compromise the SEC's fund reforms.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
May 16, 2005... At a time when key parts of the Securities and Exchange Commission's mutual fund reform agenda have yet to be implemented, some industry experts are asking whether politics could intervene to thwart the commission's most significant proposals....

FSA Bloodhounds Pursue Hedge Funds.(Financial Services Authority )
May 16, 2005... The U.K.'s Financial Services Authority has undertaken a comprehensive review of the operations of Britain's fast-growing hedge fund sector. Of prime concern, the FSA said, are the trading practices of the country's hedge funds and their...

FutureTrade 3.0 Buys Into Basket Boom.
May 16, 2005... FutureTrade, a provider of electronic equity and option execution services, will be releasing a new version of its trading platform today. The new platform, FutureTrade version 3.0, contains support for list trading, order staging and...

Iron Mountain's Feet of Clay.
May 16, 2005... A solid reputation is tarnished by a low-tech security breach involving unencrypted customer data. Research shows, however, that given current industry practices, it could happen to anyone When brokerage companies are asked who comes to...

FIX Certification Uncertainty as Swift Exec Resigns.
May 16, 2005... Max Mansur, described in a statement by FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) as "the creator and driving force behind the development of the FIX certification process," has stepped down as chair of the FIX certification working group. Mansur--the Manassas,...

North Africa, Gulf CSDs in Harmonization Pact.(Clearing, Settlement & Central Depository)
May 16, 2005... Concerned with improving a less than positive risk profile as regional exchanges launch ambitious plans for opening their markets to foreign capital, Misr for Clearing, Settlement & Central Depository (MCSD), the central securities depository...

Ameda Member Depositories.(Association of Middle East and African Depositories )
May 16, 2005... Egypt Misr Company for Clearing, Settlement & Central Depository (MCSD): Incorporated in 1992, it began operations four years later under the regulation of the Capital Markets Authority. Securities can be held in either nominee or beneficial...

Teaming To Tackle MiFID.(Market in Financial Instruments Directive)
May 16, 2005... The most significant project facing European financial institutions over the next five years will be implementing the European Union's Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). The deadline for compliance is April 2007. The inaugural...

Pricing NMS: Calculating cost of revamping markets system may depend on how you define the term "cost".(national market system)
May 16, 2005... As the industry grapples with how much it will cost to comply with Regulation NMS, it waited with bated breath last week for the Securities and Exchange Commission to release the final wording of the rule. There are strong feelings that the...

Two Independents Left Now That Knight Obtains Attain ECN.(Electronic communication network)
May 16, 2005... Earlier this month, Knight Trading Group agreed to acquire the Attain electronic communications network from Domestic Securities, continuing the assimilation of ECNs by markets and broker-dealers. Only two independent ECNs are left...

ITG: The Science of Evolution.(Investment Technology Group )
May 16, 2005... High-tech brokerage Investment Technology Group has a unique window on the evolution of market structure, both in a regulatory and a technological sense. In a way, ITG has served as a barometer of those forces: In the best of times, it has...

ATD: Faith in the Intelligent Machine.(Automated Trading Desk)(Company Profile)
May 16, 2005... Automated Trading Desk (ATD) was founded in 1988 by David Whitcomb, a pioneer in the academic study of market microstructure--the intricate detail of how an order actually gets inserted into and executed in the marketplace. Whitcomb's early...

Battle of the Bonds.
May 16, 2005... MarketAxess CEO Richard McVey says he sees no competitive threat from the corporate bond trading plans of the New York Stock Exchange--at least not in the institutional trading niche in which his firm is already securely entrenched. No surprise...

The Weekly Factoid Feed.
May 16, 2005... Infrastructure Enterprise networking heavyweight Novell acquired Immunix, maker of AppArmor, an application security product for Linux. Sony Corp. and Cingular Wireless announced that they will release the first mass-market notebook...

Names in the News.
May 16, 2005... New Sheriff in Town The Securities Exchange Commission announced last Thursday that it has named Linda Chatman Thomsen as director of its division of enforcement. Thomsen succeeds Stephen Cutler, who announced his departure to the private...

Amex's Quick Steps Down as President.(Brief Article)
May 16, 2005... The American Stock Exchange announced May 2 that Peter Quick has stepped down as president after serving five years in that position. Quick was one of three Amex executives who received Wells notices from the Securities and Exchange...

Bear Enchanted With Calypso.
May 16, 2005... Bear Stearns & Co., one of the world's top derivatives dealers, was juggling multiple proprietary systems, both on the front end and in the back office, to keep its line of business running smoothly. There were separate systems for interest...

From Wall Steet, a Call to Services.(adoption of service-oriented architecture for in-house development)
May 16, 2005... Five years ago, Wells Fargo Bank started adopting the open, "modular" standards of modern computer programming for in-house development. At the time, this meant XML and J2EE, the Enterprise Edition of the Java 2 platform from Sun Microsystems....

Pre-Trade Analytics: A Look Before Leaping.
May 23, 2005... VWAP, TWAP, Peg and Apollo: These are among the raging buzzwords of algorithmic trading, the sophisticated set of automated order-execution techniques that has broker-dealers scrambling to satisfy demands from buy-side clients, and technology...

Pirated Market Data Traced to Chinese Firms.
May 23, 2005... It was inevitable. After pirated music CDs, pirated films on DVD, and pirated software--not to mention illegal brand-name knockoffs of consumer goods that sell on a scale rivaling the originals--comes pirated market data. According to Jack...

Penson Thins Ranks of Rivals.(Penson Worldwide Inc.)
May 23, 2005... Securities processor Penson Worldwide announced yet another acquisition last week, grabbing for market share in the correspondent clearing business and further dispelling its past reputation as the feisty little clearer that could. The pending...

Alpha Males and Second Bananas.
May 23, 2005... LLast week an all-star summit of exchange chiefs made their way to Capitol Hill to testify before a Senate Banking Committee hearing on the proposed New York Stock Exchange-Archipelago and Nasdaq-Instinet mergers. The committee's concern, since...

E-Reporting in the U.K: Coming Sometime, Maybe.
May 23, 2005... In a keynote speech at the annual Complitech financial services technology exhibition held last week in London, David Kenmir, director of the Financial Services Authority's regulatory services division, laid out the U.K. regulator's 2005/2006...

The Broker Workstation: Evolve or Die.
May 23, 2005... Sitting at the desk all day, making calls and checking their computer screens for the latest trades and prices, brokers and traders are like little kids on Santa's lap when it comes to demanding the latest toys. Then again, they're like...

A Tale of Two Boxes.(Merrill Lynch and Company Inc., Thomson Corp)(Brief Article)
May 23, 2005... Some efforts at integrating the broker-dealer desktop workstation with customer relationship management systems have had troubling histories. In late 2003, for example, Merrill Lynch & Co. embarked on a five-year, billion-dollar effort with...

Report: Buy Side Embracing Algorithmic Trading.
May 23, 2005... The use of algorithmic trading by traditional buy-side firms is expected to increase over the next four years, according to a Celent Communications report released this month titled, "Algorithmic Trading Update 2005: Advanced Execution Goes...

Does China Want Foreign Technology?
May 23, 2005... With its entry into the World Trade Organization, China will open its doors to foreign capital in 2006, and domestic financial institutions will have to start getting ready for some intense international competition. Chinese brokerages and...

Call Report Automation Relaunched With XBRL.(Extensible Business Reporting Language)
May 23, 2005... Following a nearly eight-month hiatus, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will reinitiate its plan to automate bank call reports, setting an Oct. 1 deadline that falls almost exactly a year after the 2004 postponement. System testing, however,...

ECSDA: Little Progress To Report.(European Central Securities Depository Association )
May 23, 2005... Three years after receiving a mandate from the European Commission-sponsored Giovannini Group to eliminate 3 of 15 barriers to creating a unified clearing and settlement market in Europe, the European Central Securities Depository Association...

SOX Survey: Focus on Attacking Key Risk.(Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (public company accounting reform))
May 23, 2005... A recent study of the way companies are implementing the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act concludes that in putting in place the financial reporting controls required by Section 404 of the act, audit firms need to adopt a broader...