Securities Industry News articles from May 2006

Securities Industry News archives from May 2006

Treasury's Proposal For a Backstop Lender Receives Mixed Reviews.
May 8, 2006... A Treasury Department proposal to create a lender of last resort as a way to pump extra liquidity into the government securities market during times of stress is getting mixed reactions in the financial community. Some constituencies would...

Return Engagement: CME and Reuters.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange)(Reuters Group PLC)
May 8, 2006... In 1992, after five years of planning in close collaboration with Reuters Group, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) launched Globex, the electronic trading platform that has been a major contributor to its growth and profitability in recent...

Automation Has Greater Impact As Securities Lending Increases.
May 8, 2006... Technology is taking hold in securities lending, one of the few remaining relationship-dominated bastions among Wall Street's many niche trading communities, and industry participants are anticipating more profound changes in the next few...

Hedge Funds: Side Deals Move to Front.
May 8, 2006... New questions about hedge fund transparency--an issue that has been simmering as regulators and institutional investors try to scrutinize the industry more closely--are bubbling to the surface. They center on side letters and side pockets,...

An Automated Market's Mixed Blessings.
May 8, 2006... Automation has plusses and minuses, and the securities-lending market is no exception. As panelists noted during the recent Conference on International Securities Lending in Rome, the asset class is benefiting from systems that improve market...

STP Lives, But ...(securities trading)
May 8, 2006... In a research report three years ago, TowerGroup declared that straight-through processing (STP), which was ingrained in the securities industry's back-office consciousness, was dead. It suggested "celebrat[ing] the life of a moniker with good...

People In The News.(International Financial Administration )(Daniel T. Hart, Terrence F. Kelly and Thomas E. Pearson. Hart)(Nymex Holdings)(Richard Schaeffer chairman)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... International Financial Administration (IFA), a fund administrator based in the British Virgin Islands, has set up shop in Chicago with three local market veterans as principals: Daniel T. Hart, Terrence F. Kelly and Thomas E. Pearson. Hart was...

The Chicago Model.(Company overview)
May 8, 2006... Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) chairman Terry Duffy's address to his annual shareholders meeting on April 27 had an unusual resonance--or irony. While Duffy had plenty of growth figures and strategic accomplishments to boast about--a...

CCPs: Private-Market Regulation Preferred.(central counterparties)(Speech)
May 8, 2006... The most recent addition to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Randall S. Kroszner took office March 1 and on April 3 gave his first speech in that capacity to a conference in Frankfurt, Germany on Issues Related to Central Counterparty...

Weekly Options Introduced in Europe.(Eurex to bring out options with weekly instead of monthly )
May 8, 2006... Eurex, the derivatives market owned by Frankfurt-based Deutsche Borse, has become the first exchange in Europe to bring out options with weekly instead of monthly expiration dates. Starting April 24, weekly options were being traded on the...

New Classes of Options Traders for Amex.(American Stock Exchange has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission for two new classes of registered options traders)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... The American Stock Exchange has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission for two new classes of registered options traders (ROTs): remote registered options traders (RROTs) and supplemental registered options traders...

Commission Seeks Tax Consistency Across Europe.(European Union. European Commission)
May 8, 2006... Inconsistent tax-withholding practices among European Union countries continue to block the path toward the long-standing goal of a unified financial market, according to a study by a European Commission-backed panel. After reviewing tax...

Orc Software Parlays Multi-market Access Into Options Montage.
May 8, 2006... Swedish trading systems house Orc Software said it is launching a pricing and trading service for U.S. exchange-traded options that puts all six primary options markets onto a single consolidated screen, or montage. The service, dubbed U.S....

Nyfix Gives Its Algorithms a Brand Name.(NYFIX Inc to introduce marketing software)
May 8, 2006... In an effort to package and expand its algorithmic trading offerings, which are in use at more than 60 broker-dealers and institutional investment firms, Nyfix Transaction Services last week announced the introduction of Nexas, for Nyfix...

California Asset Manager Adopts Advent's APX Platform.(Tower Asset Management to use Advent Software Inc's portfolio management software)
May 8, 2006... Tower Asset Management, a Beverly Hills, Calif. firm catering to high-net-worth individuals and families, has become the latest to implement Advent Portfolio Exchange (APX), the new-generation portfolio management system from San...

Putnam Chooses Tangosol for Data Grid.
May 8, 2006... Data clustering and grid computing company Tangosol said that mutual fund giant Putnam Investments has selected its Coherence technology for large-scale, high-performance enterprise data management initiatives. Putnam said that Coherence...

DTCC Offering Back-Office Training.(Depository Trust & Clearing Corp)
May 8, 2006... To support the securities industry's efforts to standardize the back end of the trade life cycle, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) is offering an operations certification program that "for the first time sets competency standards...

AML Filing Burden Falls on Mutual Funds.
May 8, 2006... The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is now requiring mutual funds to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) with the agency. With publication of a final rule in the Federal Register on May 4, funds will have...

Roundtable: An Idea Whose Time Has Come Back.(Securities trading)
May 8, 2006... When the Securities Industry Association in 2002 shelved its project to put the U.S. equities market on a trade-date-plus-one-day (T+1) settlement schedule, the association took great pains to separate that decision from the industry's ongoing...

Fixed-Income OMS Critical to Buy-Side STP.(order management system)(straight-through processing)
May 8, 2006... Douglas Ebner at FAF Advisors, which advises the $120 billion First American Funds family, has a working definition of straight-through processing (STP): "the overall streamlining of operations from the front to the middle to the back office...

Separate Accounts Due for a Communications Upgrade.(Accenture Ltd's report recommending XML for separately managed accounts )
May 8, 2006... Separately managed accounts (SMAs) may soon have something in common: their messaging protocols. The industry's trade group, the Money Management Institute (MMI), has been working with consulting firm Accenture on a standard using extensible...

Omgeo-graphy: Five years on, the DTCC-Thomson joint venture reports growth in revenues, customers and products.(Omgeo L.L.C)
May 8, 2006... This month, the post-trade communications and services hub Omgeo is celebrating its fifth anniversary. A joint venture of Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) and Thomson Corp., Omgeo was born at a high-water mark of the global...

Will Tokyo Be Asia-Pacific's Top Dog?(Tokyo Stock Exchange)
May 15, 2006... Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) chairman and CEO Taizo Nishimuro had barely completed his blueprint for overhauling and modernizing the exchange's technology infrastructure--the fix for an embarrassing series of glitches and breakdowns since last...

Raising Its Ante in Derivatives, Markit Buys Communicator.(MarkIT acquires Communicator Inc.)
May 15, 2006... The over-the-counter derivatives market and its red-hot demand for accurate pricing and processing of traded instruments led Markit Group, a London-based valuations provider, to acquire White Plains, N.Y.-based Communicator, a distributor of...

IM Catches Fire, Raises Concerns.(impact of instant messaging on securities trading)
May 15, 2006... Even as Wall Street continues to struggle to meet electronic archiving requirements, a new application of instant messaging (IM) is spreading like wildfire, catching regulators off-guard and troubling compliance officers: Traders are...

ISE Options Market Shifts Gears: CEO Krell Turns Toward Equities.(International Securities Exchange)(David Krell)(Interview)
May 15, 2006... As the first all-electronic options market in the U.S., the International Securities Exchange (ISE) rose to the top of the charts. Launched in May 2000, it quickly challenged the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and American Stock...

SunGard Launches Market-Timing Solution.(SunGard Data Systems Inc.)(SunGard Transaction Network 22c-2 Services)
May 15, 2006... SunGard Data Systems has officially inaugurated a service bureau to help mutual funds and intermediaries comply with new regulations aimed at curtailing the market-timing practices that came to light when the mutual fund scandals surfaced in...

Global Trader.(Auerbach Grayson & Company's new venture Axes)(Peter F. Gaffney )(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Heralding the launch of Axes, its electronic agency trading network, New York brokerage Auerbach Grayson promoted Peter F. Gaffney from EVP to president of the new venture. Gaffney joined Auerbach Grayson last year to spearhead the initiative...

Global Limits.(cross border investments)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Institutions still encounter plenty of unwanted costs and inconvenience when they trade stocks across borders, but at least they get their deals done. Despite technology advances and exchange mergers, particularly in Europe, that promise...

Pandemic Prep.(Crisis management)(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... An alarming draft report from the White House in early May painted a dire picture of what could happen in a worst-case pandemic flu outbreak: one-third of the population infected, 2 million deaths, up to 40 percent of the workforce absent for...

Compression Proposal.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... A proposal to prohibit compression of electronic trade orders was published in the May 8 Federal Register. It requires real-time trade submissions to Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC), bars netting of trades before submission and revises...

People In The News.(DPM Mellon hired Bob Sisti)(FX Solutions appointed Steven Janowsky )
May 15, 2006... Alternative investments administrator DPM Mellon has hired Bob Sisti from State Street Global Markets to fill the new position of SVP of operations. Reporting to DPM Mellon president and COO Guy Castranova and Frank Dittrich, director of asset...

A Way Forward for SMAs.(separately managed accounts)(usage of XML (Extensible markup language) as a standard format)
May 15, 2006... The securities industry thrives on innovation, relentlessly developing and improving new products to meet the needs of an ever-increasing base of investors. In recent years, one of those innovations--separately managed accounts (SMAs), or...

CCO Review: Checklists Are a Start.(Walsh, John)(United States. Securities and Exchange Commission)(Speech)
May 15, 2006... The first annual rounds of compliance reviews under recent Securities and Exchange Commission reforms are largely over, John Walsh, associate director and general counsel of the SEC's office of compliance inspections and examinations, said at...

BofA's Flatley Joins Deutsche Bank; Harts to BofA.(Rob Flatley joins Deutsche Bank AG (Frankfurt, Germany))(William R. Harts joins Bank of America Corp.)
May 15, 2006... Banc of America Securities' managing director for electronic trading services, Rob Flatley, has joined Deutsche Bank Securities as managing director and head of global electronic execution for the equity asset class. BofA quickly countered the...

Deutsche's Clients Get Radianz's Proximity.(Deutsche Bank AG (Frankfurt, Germany))(Radianz Proximity Solution)
May 15, 2006... Financial extranet operator BT Radianz said it will offer its Radianz Proximity Solution to hedge fund and other buy-side clients of Deutsche Bank for low-latency access to market data and trade execution in Europe. Deutsche Bank is the...

MarketAxess Wants to Be "Leader" in Consolidation Fixed-income platform eyeing interdealer and retail electronic trading potential.(Richard McVey)(Interview)
May 15, 2006... MarketAxess CEO Richard McVey is far from alone in anticipating further convergence and consolidation in trading venues such as his own, which since 2001 has staked out a strong position as a multidealer-to-buy-side network for trading...

Aleri Links With Data Integrator To Bolster Streaming Platform.(Attunity Inc.)
May 15, 2006... In its latest move to extend its high-speed stream processing technology beyond financial institutions' electronic trading operations, Chicago-based Aleri Labs last week announced a strategic partnership with Attunity, a software company known...

Mantas Refines AML System, With Cost Benefits.(anti-money laundering)(Mantas 4.3)
May 15, 2006... Mantas, a provider of software used in anti-money laundering (AML) compliance, released its version 4.3 last month, saying it will improve price-performance of firms' compliance and risk management systems. The Herndon, Va.-based vendor aims to...

Hedge Fund Administrators: The Big Get Bigger.(business consolidation)
May 15, 2006... A flurry of takeovers in the past two years has left 69 percent of the alternative investment industry's assets in the hands of 12 global fund administrators, and the consolidation isn't over, according to the 2006 Fund Administrator Service...

Buy-Side Systems Options Increase Along With Demand.
May 15, 2006... Rampant growth in derivatives trading and the corresponding demand from both traditional asset managers and hedge funds for risk analysis tools has vendors of portfolio systems that perform pricing and risk functions scrambling--for customers...

Options Markets Move Toward Penny Trading.
May 22, 2006... A half decade since U.S. equities markets converted from fractional to decimal pricing of shares, options exchanges are taking steps to enable price improvement and quoting in one-cent increments. A Securities and Exchange Commission official...

Remaining ECNs at Mercy of Nasdaq Initiatives: Anticipating restrictions, independents explore alternative quote venues.(Electronic communications networks)(The Nasdaq Stock Market Inc.)
May 22, 2006... Electronic communications networks (ECNs) are anxiously awaiting a Securities and Exchange Commission decision on a Nasdaq Stock Market proposal that reflects inevitable changes in market structure but could severely damage their businesses in...

Calyon Takes Fresh Approach to FX, Chooses Technology From Integral.(Calyon Financial)( FX Edge )
May 22, 2006... The foreign exchange world acquired yet another competitive wrinkle last week as Calyon Financial introduced its FX Edge online trading platform. The Chicago-based brokerage, part of the investment banking arm of France's Credit Agricole, has...

Proxy Voting Wired in Europe.(F&C Asset Management )
May 22, 2006... Announcements last month by F&C Asset Management in the U.K. and proxy voting agent Manifest highlight growing European interest in automating--and standardizing--the often manually intensive processing of proxy votes. F&C, which has...

Nasdaq in Junk Bin.(The Nasdaq Stock Market Inc.)(Brief article)
May 22, 2006... The Nasdaq Stock Market after its buying spree--raising its London Stock Exchange (LSE) stake to 24.1 percent as of May 10--is no longer investment grade in the eyes of Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's (S&P). The latter lowered...

Taking the Stock.(Industria Confezione Abbigliamento Perugia S.p.A.)(EBS Inc.)(Brief article)
May 22, 2006... London interdealer brokerage Icap agreed a month ago to pay $775 million in cash for the foreign exchange and market data systems company EBS Group. But the 13 major forex market-making banks that own EBS also had the option of taking as much...

Record Breakers.( trading boom )(Brief article)
May 22, 2006... There's no end to the derivatives trading boom as the major exchanges cite peak volumes in various product lines. Chicago Mercantile Exchange said 1.87 million of its benchmark CME E-mini S&P 500 futures contracts traded last Wednesday,...

People In The News.(Ivers W. Riley of International Securities Exchange to resign)(Trading Technologies Inc. appoints Bill Herder)(SuperDerivatives appoints Leor Jivotovsky )
May 22, 2006... After four years as International Securities Exchange (ISE) chairman, Ivers W. Riley is stepping down, though remaining on the New York-based options (and soon to be equities) market operator's board. His successor, stepping up from vice...

A Fresh Look at Funds.
May 22, 2006... It may at first seem anomalous to be considering whether there is serious competition for an industry that has almost $9 trillion in assets and over 90 million customers. There is no doubt that mutual funds are today the dominant form of equity...

Preparing for Pennies.(Elizabeth K. King)(United States. Securities and Exchange Commission)(Speech)
May 22, 2006... U.S. stocks went to decimal pricing in 2000 and 2001. Now it's options' turn. As reported on the front page, much of the marketplace is ready to go along with Elizabeth K. King, associate director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's...

New Standards Panel Faces Old Problems: ISO WG 4 sets meeting dates, aims to resolve message-standard fragmentation.(International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 20022 )
May 22, 2006... The securities industry's newest messaging standards body is preparing to address changes in the design rules and the modeling methodology for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 20022 messaging standard. ISO working group...

Russia Market Makes Headway With Clearstream, Swift.(Clearstream International)(Swift international communications cooperative)
May 22, 2006... Russia's securities market took a step toward improving its transaction processing infrastructure last week with an assist from two prominent financial industry entities. Luxembourg-based Clearstream became the first international central...

China Allows Intraday and Margin Trading.
May 22, 2006... In the latest of a series of Chinese market modernization moves, investors in stocks on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges as of July 1 will be able to borrow money or securities from brokerages and to buy and sell single stocks on the same...

ADP Offers Wireless Access to Brokers.(Automatic Data Processing Inc.)(ProVisor2Go)
May 22, 2006... In a distant echo of wireless initiatives pursued by the brokerage industry several years ago, Automatic Data Processing (ADP) is making its ProVisor brokerage platform available over Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices. The Roseland,...

Hedge Fund Servicer Caledonian Signs With Paladyne.(Caledonian Fund Services )(Paladyne Systems)
May 22, 2006... Cayman Islands hedge fund administrator Caledonian Fund Services has decided to use Paladyne Systems' information technology services on a hosted basis, a move that underscores a trend among small and mid-tier administrators to rely on external...

Do Floors Have a Future?(Philadelphia Stock Exchange Inc.)(Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.)(New York Mercantile Exchange)
May 22, 2006... A spate of recent strategic announcements--by the International Securities Exchange's (ISE) equities offshoot, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX), and the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) in a cooperative agreement with the Chicago...

Regulation NMS: Four Viewpoints.(National Market System)
May 22, 2006... Delayed or not, the three key trading-related provisions of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation National Market System (NMS)--the order protection, fair access and market data rules--are taken as a given throughout the...

A Futures-Equities Combination, (Almost) In Progress Down Under.(Australian Stock Exchange Ltd.)(Sydney Futures Exchange)
May 22, 2006... As speculation has swirled in the U.S. about potential exchange mergers, one of the most intriguing possibilities--and perhaps most over-the-top in terms of size, product reach and integration complexity--was that of the newly public NYSE Group...

No End to Fragmentation: Professor Harris on continuous innovation, market efficiencies and the inevitable structural and regulatory challenges accompanying rapid technological change.(professor Lawrence E. Harris )(Interview)
May 22, 2006... As academicians go, University of Southern California finance and business economics professor Lawrence E. Harris is a crossover star. Occupant of the Fred V. Keenan chair in finance at the Los Angeles university's Marshall School of Business,...

NYSE Euronext: Beginning of the Endgame?(NYSE Group Inc to acquire Euronext N.V)
May 29, 2006... Ending weeks of anticipation with anticlimactic predictability, NYSE Group unveiled its proposal for acquiring Euronext on May 22, a EUR8 billion ($10.2 billion) stock and cash offer that Euronext deemed preferable to that of Deutsche Borse. A...

Data Encryption Deserves a Closer Look.
May 29, 2006... In a perfect world, all customer data would be encrypted. But it just isn't that easy or economical for corporations--even those in the financial industry that pride themselves on the security of critical databases and communications--to...

IBM's Brand of Supercomputing Moves Into Finance; Aspeed Has Proof of Concept.
May 29, 2006... Supercomputing--the massively high-performance processing that to date has been deployed mostly in the research and scientific realms--has been edging closer to commercial applicability in finance and other industries through concepts such as...

NYSE's Bond Initiative Ignites Debate Regarding NASD Oversight.(National Association of Securities Dealers)(New York Stock Exchange)
May 29, 2006... The Bond Market Association (BMA) is urging the Securities and Exchange Commission not to permit the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) to extend its regulatory oversight and price monitoring to securities that are traded on...

Citigroup on Reuters.(Citigroup Inc will join Reuters Group PLC)
May 29, 2006... The competitive free-for-all in the foreign exchange market and its burgeoning electronic branch, e-FX, isn't letting up. Citigroup indicated last week that it will join the Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange (RTFX) global desktop network for...

Lava Gets Belzberg.(Belzberg Technologies uses Lava Trading Inc's product )
May 29, 2006... Toronto-based Belzberg Technologies, a high-tech equity and options brokerage that includes an agency trading operation in the U.S. and cross-border market access, selected Lava Trading's LavaFX product suite to provide foreign exchange...

MTS Market Gains.(MTS Group )(Brief article)
May 29, 2006... In a commentary last week on NYSE Group's proposed merger with Euronext, veteran researcher Larry Tabb pointed to an aspect of the deal that was easy to overlook amid the excitement: Euronext's ownership of MTS Group, Europe's pioneering...

More Records Fall.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc and Eurex reported record volume of contracts )(Brief article)
May 29, 2006... A week ago here it was noted that the three Chicago derivatives markets, among others, were breaking volume records, confirming there is no letup in the trading demand for many of their products. The beat goes on: Chicago Mercantile Exchange on...

Hurry Up and Slow Down.
May 29, 2006... Suddenly, clarity seems to be breaking out, transatlantically. The much anticipated NYSE Group bid for Euronext, itself the consolidator of five major markets in Western Europe, took tangible shape May 22, to the apparently welcomed tune of...

Bernanke on Hedge Funds and Systemic Risk.(Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta)
May 29, 2006... With each passing week since his Feb. 1 confirmation as Federal Reserve Board chairman, Ben S. Bernanke has been signaling in formal and informal ways how the central bank's style and approach may differ from that of his predecessor Alan...

Parting Shot From G30: Better Standardization Needed.(Group of 30)
May 29, 2006... The lack of standardization in asset servicing procedures tops the list of ailments in the world's clearance and settlement infrastructure, according to a final progress report issued last week by the global monitoring committee (GMC) of the...

AML Automation Stalls as Treasury Agency Regroups.
May 29, 2006... Having recently called a halt to work on an automated report-filing initiative, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has left many questions unanswered for securities firms that have to comply with the...

Pershing Adds Northwestern.(Northwestern Mutual Investment Services)
May 29, 2006... The largest correspondent clearing firm, Bank of New York's Pershing unit, has completed its largest conversion ever in terms of assets brought onto its platform: Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, the broker-dealer arm of the...

UBS Makes Capital-Markets Outsourcing Move: First of up to 500 employees occupy Hyderabad, India facility.
May 29, 2006... With little fanfare, reflecting how routine financial industry outsourcing has become, Zurich-based UBS has set up a center in Hyderabad, India to deliver information technology functions supporting various business lines around the world,...

ESF: Staying True to Form.(European Securities Forum to merge with Euroclear)
May 29, 2006... Launched in 1999 by about two dozen of the world's largest financial firms, the European Securities Forum (ESF), then known as the European Securities Industry Users Group, set out to broker a merger of international depositories Euroclear and...