Securities Industry News articles from November 2004

Securities Industry News archives from November 2004

Down But Not Out: Can opponents block hedge fund regulation through litigation?
November 1, 2004... Just days after a deeply divided Securities and Exchange Commission approved hedge fund regulation, the first lawsuit is about to be filed, paving the way for efforts by a well-organized and powerful opposition to block the rule. "I think...

Progress on Continuity.
November 1, 2004... After years of cajoling and debate-including a report released by the General Accounting Office just last week that criticizes the industry and the Securities and Exchange Commission for insufficient commitment to business continuity issues-the...

Risky Business for Pension Funds.
November 1, 2004... You say you want a revolution, well, you know We all want to change the world. Lennon and McCartney couldn't possibly have been thinking of the state of the pension fund industry today when they penned "Revolution" in 1968; nevertheless...

Votes and Variables.
November 1, 2004... We like to think that picking up your copy of Securities Industry News is the absolute first thing you do every Monday morning. But we'll acknowledge that might not always be the case. There's that first cup of coffee from the pot that probably...

The Infrastructure Imperative: How to Support Trading Growth.
November 1, 2004... For tier-one investment banks, growth opportunities lie not in the middle of the revenue and income scale but at both ends. Banks that can develop and leverage their infrastructure to support high-volume trading activity will capture...

BOXed In, or Breaking Out?
November 1, 2004... In math class we learned that an inflection point is the location on a graph where its concavity changes. New marketplaces strive to reach this point when volume takes off and trading desks clamor for immediate connections. Failure to reach an...

Omgeo Pursues Trade-Matching Boost.
November 1, 2004... Just one short year ago, Omgeo was offering special pricing deals to attract "early adopters" to its Central Trade Manager (CTM), a post-trade matching service. Now, the firm's emphasis is on how to generate more traffic for the fledgling...

Can Computershare Digest EquiServe?
November 1, 2004... The ink is barely dry on Computershare's agreement to purchase U.S. stock transfer giant Equi-Serve and already questions are being raised as to how quickly and how seamlessly the Australian shareholder record keeper can absorb the new...

Defensive Filings Defeat Purpose of SARs.(suspicious activity reports)
November 1, 2004... Reacting to the real threat of civil or criminal sanctions and the equally significant reputational risk stemming from the perception that AML procedures are lax, firms have begun filing SARs reports, not because they think there's significant...

Spread Execution, Fully Guaranteed.
November 1, 2004... Professional traders are pursuing increasingly complex arbitrage trading strategies across multiple markets and trading instruments, searching for ever more elusive price discrepancies as low market volatility continues and competition heats...

Disintermediation of local agent banks in the continent's cross-border equities settlement arena took another small step forward as NeoNet sealed an agreement with Swiss central depository Sega-InterSettle (SIS) for straight-through processing of European equities transactions.
November 1, 2004... SIS and independent agency broker NeoNet have created a cross-border trading and settlement link known as Inset- Access to enable SIS clients to settle any of the transactions executed by NeoNet in one of 13 European markets directly...

Bank of New York Overhauls Business Engine: Removing redundancy and enabling universal access to data supports expansion into new businesses.
November 1, 2004... With an eye to making effective use of a bulging portfolio of buy-side acquisitions made over the past ten years, Bank of New York senior management has recently given an initial green light to an aggressive IT integration effort. It's all part...

On The Record.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... "It would seem that the weight of evidence is overwhelming that we accept the staff recommendation [for hedge fund registration]. In fact, to do so would be a major dereliction of the Commission's responsibility." -SEC Chairman William...

Registration Day.(hedge fund registration )
November 8, 2004... Now that hedge fund registration is on track for implementation, how should the industry prepare to meet the February 2006 effective date? How significant will the costs and administrative burdens be? Fund advisers that are now required to...

SEC, Other Feds Play Continuity Hot Potato.
November 8, 2004... A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO)-commissioned by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in the spring, circulated to industry participants and regulators in September and made public on Oct. 27-raises pointed...

Mending Lending.
November 8, 2004... The multibillion-dollar securities lending and borrowing industry is bracing itself for a shake-up next year, when new Securities and Exchange Commission requirements, designed to improve transparency, come into play. According to the...

Interesting Times.
November 8, 2004... Everyone is familiar with the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times"-everyone except the ancient Chinese, that is. Proverb researcher Stephen de Long has traced the popular phrase back to a June 7, 1966 speech by Robert...

Automation Invasion Hits Hedge Funds.
November 8, 2004... Hedge fund automation continued its invasion of the front office this week as Linedata announced an agreement to provide clients of UBS's prime brokerage operations with a hosted version of its LongView order management system (OMS). Hedge...

Variable Pricing Urged to Counter Fund Freeloaders.
November 8, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission and others are pushing hard to clean up the mutual fund industry's market-timing and late-trading messes by proposing a 2-percent redemption fee on funds held less than five days (Securities Industry News,...

FIX Certification Scene Still Shifting.(FIX Protocol)
November 8, 2004... It's an exclusive club whose members know one other all too well. Even so, the certification vendors engaged by FIX Protocol Ltd. (Securities Industry News, Oct. 11) can't seem to seal the proverbial deal when it comes to developing a...

Keeping E-mail on Tap: Two Firms Brew Solutions.(backup software)
November 8, 2004... When it comes to regulations governing the storage and retrieval of old e-mail messages, there's a powerful triumvirate to answer to: the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Association of Securities Dealers, and the New York Stock...

On The Record.(Acting Commodity and Futures Trading Commission, International Organization of Securities Commissions technical committee's Conference)
November 8, 2004... "I believe firmly that there is a kind of optimal regulation that recognizes a "mapping" from the regulatory structure to the market, its products and its participants-or in other words, a calibration of regulation to fit the particular risk...

Is Fiserv on the Block?
November 15, 2004... Another large clearing firm may be disappearing into the maw of an even bigger clearing firm, leaving 180 or so broker-dealer correspondents with a conversion to face in the new year. Persistent market talk last week pointed to Fiserv...

MarketAxess: Big Post-IPO Plans.(Initial public offerings)
November 15, 2004... They're not saying much over at MarketAxess after raising $55 million in an IPO earlier this month, as the firm strictly adheres to the "quiet period" that muzzles executives for 25 days once trading begins. But the registration statement the...

Funds Clean Up Their Act.
November 15, 2004... Although other corporate scandals have taken over the headlines, the market timing and late trading problems that engulfed the mutual fund industry for much of this year have not yet run their course. On Nov. 4, the Securities and Exchange...

Former FISD Exec To Set Up Rival Shop.(Financial Services Industry Division)
November 15, 2004... With the ink barely dry on his departure from the Financial Services Industry Division (FISD) of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), Mike Atkin is already making plans to start a rival organization called the Financial...

Time Waits for No One.
November 15, 2004... Since the 1980s, when Wall Street began its exponential migration away from phone-based communications and manual processing, a constant chorus-or is it a lament?-has filled the air: "Technology moves faster than regulation." Of course,...

Spain to Match Consolidation Trend.(Spain's central depository Iberclear)
November 15, 2004... Spain's central depository Iberclear will phase in a new matching service for over-the-counter trades starting in February-another step toward improving post-trade clearing and settlement in a heretofore complex and fragmented market. The...

Corporate IM Converges on Standards.(instant messaging)
November 15, 2004... The time when corporate IM users can send instant messages to one other as easily as e-mail is still at least a couple of years off, experts say. But IM vendors are beginning to take small steps towards the day when interoperability will be as...

Bandwidth Drives Merc's API Options.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange)(application program interface)
November 15, 2004... Since deciding to replace its proprietary application program interface (API) for market data with an open standard earlier this year, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has taken its time deciding which open standard to adopt. The Merc wants...

Custodian Banks Wrongly Valued: Study.
November 15, 2004... Custodian banks are overvalued by traditional Wall Street securities analysts and should expect weakening revenue growth, according to a report by broker-dealer Mercer Securities and affiliate consultancy Mercer Oliver Wyman on the future of...

Drumbeat for Retreat: The market data proposals of Reg NMS failed to foresee complications-and partisan passions.
November 15, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed Regulation NMS has so underestimated the complexity of the market data portion of the proposal that the market data provisions may have to be separated from the rest of Reg NMS so that...

Scrambling to Feed the New Need for Speed.
November 15, 2004... Hedge funds, the current darlings of the investment world, are increasingly turning to direct access to exchange data rather than using data aggregators, in order to satisfy their voracious appetite for latency-free market data to feed...

On The Record.
November 15, 2004... "These are not deliberately emotive questions or answers. They reflect the day-to-day experience of our members who increasingly are subject to more and more regulatory burdens which will only increase costs to investors, make the U.K. markets...

China Market Sets Stage.
November 22, 2004... The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) has already changed quite a bit since it first opened 14 years ago. Its trading floor is now almost completely silent-1,600 computer workstations sit empty because communication infrastructure has improved to...

Fixed-Income Link Is STP Milestone.
November 22, 2004... The fixed-income markets made up more ground on equities in the race to full straight-through processing last week as post-trade communications giant Omgeo announced the shakedown cruise of a key processing linkup. BNP Paribas Securities...

Defending a New Way'.(Interview)
November 22, 2004... Calling ReFlow a "service provider" is a little like calling Tiffany & Co. a jewelry store-the simple words don't do justice to the complex reality. Yet that's the term Dr. Roger Edelen, managing director of research at San Francisco-based...

Self-Control and the Shotgun.(stock exchanges)
November 22, 2004... As Annette Nazareth, the Securities and Exchange Commission's director of market regulation, commented on the commission's Nov. 9 proposals regarding governance and oversight at U.S. stock exchanges, she referred to transparency as a "great...

The Best of All Possible Worlds.(stock exchanges)
November 22, 2004... Two weeks ago, NYSE CEO John Thain spoke to the Securities Industry Association annual meeting in Boca Raton, Fla. about his eventful first year at the helm. The same week, the SEC issued proposals for remaking governance and increasing...

Trading Technologies Hardballs Exchanges.
November 22, 2004... Trading Technologies (TT) has given Chicago's two futures exchanges an ultimatum, say sources close to the vendor: Pay 2.5 cents for each contract TT sends their way, or face higher fees for their broker-dealer clients, as well as potential...

Nexa Expands Its Order-Routing Reach.
November 22, 2004... Appealing to today's most active traders, Nexa Technologies has launched RadiusPro, a pan-European direct-access trading system with order management functions that targets small and midsize broker-dealers and their professional trading...

FISD Still Spreading the Messaging.(Financial Information Software Division)(market data definition language)
November 22, 2004... The fallout over Mike Atkin's departure from the Financial Information Software Division (FISD) of the Software & Information Industry Association will not prevent the organization from continuing its standardization initiatives, says chief...

Dutch Pension Fund Reform Creates New Opportunities.
November 22, 2004... The Netherlands' recently enacted legislation on Dutch pension funds could result in new opportunities for custodian banks and other risk management providers, say market players. While many of Europe's pension fund markets are undergoing...

Smart Docs To Ease Actions.(Reference Data User Group )
November 22, 2004... While much of the progress on ridding corporate actions processing of paper comes from automating communications between market players, the Reference Data User Group (RDUG) is claiming a breakthrough of a different kind-at the message source....

On The Record.
November 22, 2004... "You can't fight the policing of hedge funds. You can only hope to modify the rules policing hedge funds." -Louis Harvey, CEO of Dalbar, speaking last week in Securities Industry News' Web seminar, "The Costs of Compliance: Preparing for...