Securities Industry News articles from November 2005

Securities Industry News archives from November 2005

Bond Firms Move Toward Online Hub for Issuance: Fixed-income leaders support standards for "e-syndications".
November 7, 2005... Bond market players are working on standards for issuing new securities electronically, using a protocol interchangeable with FIX and based on specifications and a data repository already developed in Europe by the International Capital Market...

Gains for New-Breed Clearers: Fidelity and ADP underscore back-office market shifts.
November 7, 2005... Two large broker-dealers' decisions to change clearing platforms highlight the emergence of new stars in the back-office outsourcing world. Fidelity Investments' National Financial unit is emerging as a big-league player after luring Thomas...

No More Bayous?
November 7, 2005... Some of the largest hedge funds have legitimate broker-dealer affiliates that in some cases compete on turf that used to belong entirely to the traditional sell side of Wall Street. But then there are broker-dealers like those set up by Bayou...

A Swing at the SEC.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
November 7, 2005... The William Donaldson era may be over at the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the country's leading financial institutions aren't giving the SEC a free pass. The Financial Services Roundtable (FSR) commissioned a paper from old...

Reg NMS and MiFID: Parallels and Contrasts.(National Market System)(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive)
November 7, 2005... On two separate tracks, the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation National Market System (NMS) and the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) will have profound effects on how exchanges, broker-dealers and...

LSE Takes Key Step in Upgrade Plan.(London Stock Exchange has implemented Infolect)
November 7, 2005... The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has implemented Infolect, a real-time information delivery system based on new-generation technologies and a key component of a four-year plan to upgrade the exchange's trading technology. The LSE said the...

Data Spending On Rise as Firms Get Serious About Risk.
November 7, 2005... Financial services companies will increase annual spending on risk-related market data management by more than two-thirds in the next half decade, according to a soon-to-be-released study by Financial Insights. The financial research unit...

Rethinking the SEC's Mission.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
November 7, 2005... Investor protection is job one at the Securities and Exchange Commission. But according to a study published last month by the Washington, D.C.-based Financial Services Roundtable (FSR), the commission is neglecting a statutory...

How Wide--and Deep--Is the SEC Net?(Securities and Exchange Commission)
November 7, 2005... Newly registered hedge fund advisers should expect to be examined by the Securities and Exchange Commission before long--or so the agency says. It is required to perform an initial exam, or audit, once a fund has registered. But it's easier...

How Safe is the Soft-Dollar Harbor?
November 7, 2005... As securities industry technology and service vendors parse the Securities and Exchange Commission's recently issued guidance on soft-dollar commissions, it would stand to reason that services covered by the safe-harbor provision--largely...

Hungate, Reuters Marketing Chief, Takes Asia Post.
November 7, 2005... Reuters Group announced Thursday that Alex Hungate, chief marketing officer and a key contributor to the turnaround program orchestrated by CEO Tom Glocer, will become managing director of Reuters Asia, effective Jan. 1. Hungate will be...

Communicator, AOL Establish Instant-Messaging Link.(America Online)
November 7, 2005... Communicator, operator of Hub Connex and related online communications facilities for the securities industry, has formed an alliance with America Online to provide secure instant messaging (IM) capabilities that meet regulatory compliance...

FIX Certification: Wait Till Next Year--At Least.
November 7, 2005... FIX certification is on the back burner and may stay there for years to come. "To be quite candid, the certification program, although well-intended, has met with limited success," said Dan Doscas, co-chair of the FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) global...

Portware Reaches Out to Futures via TT Program.(Trading Technologies International)(Trading Technologies International )
November 7, 2005... Portware, a New York-based developer of broker-neutral, automated portfolio trading software that has gained rapid acceptance amid the algorithmic trading boom, has joined the Trading Technologies International (TT) Partner Program in a bid to...

Names in the News.(Appointments and Promotions)
November 7, 2005... Exchanges IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) elevated its chief operating officer, Charles A. Vice, into the president's seat. Vice has been with ICE since its inception, having served since 1994 with its predecessor company, Continental Power...

A Closer Look at Liquidity: Fragmentation isn't the problem that it used to be.
November 14, 2005... With the size of the average transaction on the major equities exchanges falling below 400 shares--down by more than half since the late 1990s--fragmentation of markets and liquidity poses more of a challenge to traders and the order-routing...

FIX Faces Need for Speed.
November 14, 2005... Every participant in the securities industry is working on ways to deal with the glut of market data and the imperative that it be managed, parsed and analyzed instantaneously to meet transaction and portfolio management requirements, and FIX...

NMS: It's All About the Data.
November 14, 2005... In the tradition of the year-2000 conversion, the introduction of the euro, decimal pricing of stocks and black-box trading automation, Securities and Exchange Commission Regulation National Market System (NMS) is shaping up as the latest...

Room for One More Outsourcer.
November 14, 2005... From a distance, the top tier of India's outsourcing industry appears stable, with a few familiar names, such as Tata and Wipro, dominating the sector. ARthur Flew says there are good reasons why this select group of large-scale companies is...

The Cost of Failure.
November 14, 2005... There are times when a business-continuity disaster is completely unforeseen and cannot be planned for. And in other cases it is clear that the people in charge should have known better and planned specifically for such contingencies. That's a...

Reg NMS's Unintended Consequences.
November 14, 2005... The Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation NMS, adopted last April, was designed to modernize the regulatory structure of the U.S. equity markets. But like other rules governing the securities industry, such as the order directing the...

CBOE Puts Complex Order Book In Play.
November 14, 2005... The Chicago Board Options Exchange has completed the rollout of its complex order book (COB), a system for trading multipart strategy, or spread, orders electronically. Anthony Montesano, the exchange's VP of trading systems development,...

FPL Director Post Vacant.(Peter Randall leaves FIX Protocol Ltd)
November 14, 2005... FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) has not decided whether to hire a new executive director following the departure last month of Peter Randall, who was in that position for about two and a half years. Randall was the first full-time executive...

EdgeTrade Claims Smart-Order Breakthrough.
November 14, 2005... EdgeTrade, an agency brokerage and developer of algorithmic trading and direct market access (DMA) software, has introduced an order-execution algorithm that the company's CEO, Joseph Wald, claims is "a category breakthrough." Dubbed Sumo,...

Tabb: Shared Connectivity Is the Future.
November 14, 2005... Secure, reliable, high-speed and low-latency communications infrastructures, particularly the breed of shared extranets championed by the likes of BT Radianz and Transaction Network Services, will define the future of financial markets...

BT Radianz Adds Derivatives Connectivity, Inks DMA Agreement.
November 14, 2005... Financial connectivity networker BT Radianz has expanded its Radianz Proximity service into the futures and options market. The company announced at the Futures and Options Expo in Chicago last week that its customers can now take advantage of...

ISE To Provide Market-Depth Data.
November 14, 2005... The International Securities Exchange (ISE) said it will enhance its market data offering to provide transparency for investors beyond the best bid-offer (BBO), starting in the second quarter of 2006. Thomas Ascher, chief strategy officer...

Sun Extends Clustering in Disaster Recovery.
November 14, 2005... Sun Microsystems is taking its Sun Cluster systems in a new direction--disaster recovery--and has won an endorsement from UBS Investment Bank, reflecting Sun's ability, with its computing power and pricing structure, to attract high-end...

D&B Directs Database Skills Toward Compliance.
November 14, 2005... Dun & Bradstreet, the venerable business data collection firm, is launching a new unit, D&B Enterprise Risk & Compliance Solutions, to help financial institutions manage their risk exposure and comply with regulations like Basel II and the USA...

Knowing Your Customer.
November 14, 2005... Under Section 326 of the USA Patriot Act, financial institutions are required to take a risk-based approach to customer identification. At a minimum, they must verify the identity of people or businesses when opening an account, screen...

DTCC Calls in Tata for Overhaul.(Depository Trust and Clearing Corp.)
November 21, 2005... The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) has tapped Indian outsourcing and systems-development powerhouse Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to design a single platform to consolidate its hodgepodge of legacy applications and subsystems in its...

T-Zero Plus Four Months: Running Nonstop.
November 21, 2005... When asked if he has relocated since taking the helm of T-Zero this summer, Mark Beeston has a hard time giving a straight answer. "No, but my wife probably thinks otherwise," says Beeston, who ended a 13-year career with Deutsche Bank to...

NMS: The Messaging.(National Market System )
November 21, 2005... The Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation National Market System (NMS) will result in an architectural overhaul of U.S. markets that would not be possible without the technology developed since the 1996 order-handling rules. That...

OMX Acquires Division of Computershare.
November 21, 2005... OMX, the Stockholm-based exchange operator and systems provider to financial and energy markets, said Friday that it has signed a letter of intent to acquire the markets technology business of Australia's Computershare for about SEK250 million...

The Schluep-Schwab Connection.
November 21, 2005... Not many individual investors outside of San Mateo, Calif. have heard of Fred Albert Schluep. But surely most of them know Charles Schwab & Co., the largest U.S. discount broker and a sizable force in asset management and online financial...

Cracking the MiFID Code: European regulatory initiative sparks debate on business identification methods.(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive )
November 21, 2005... As if the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) wasn't contentious enough, it is now causing controversy in the highly technical but pivotal area of attaching identification codes to counterparties and business...

Archipelago To Launch New Options Platform.
November 21, 2005... Archipelago Holdings, owner and operator of the all-electronic Archipelago Exchange and pending merger partner of the New York Stock Exchange, unveiled plans last week for its next-generation options trading platform. Replacing the PCX...

TNS, Trading Metrics Offer Transaction Monitoring via Cisco.
November 21, 2005... Transaction Network Services (TNS), a Reston, Va.-based networking services company with a strong concentration in financial-transaction applications, has formed a partnership with Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Trading Metrics to deliver software that...

Pressure Is on Brokers as Buy Side Gets Selective.
November 21, 2005... Asset managers are becoming increasingly cautious in their selection of trade execution partners, Peter Kearns, president of NeoNet Securities, an executing brokerage affiliated with Stockholm-based NeoNet, said last week. "For a number of...

Demise of FIX Certification Not Yet Certifiable.
November 21, 2005... While vendor certification may have been officially taken off the table by FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL), other industry players have been looking for a way to resurrect the program in some form--with or without the participation of FPL. ...

Data Management Is Hot Issue Globally.
November 21, 2005... A global survey of over 1,000 financial institutions by data management systems vendor AIM Software and the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration indicates that almost three out of four are looking to raise their data...

SunGard-Portware Algo Offering Attracts AG Edwards.
November 21, 2005... St. Louis-based brokerage AG Edwards has gone live on SunGard's Brass turnkey program trading solution, which incorporates the execution management system (EMS) from prominent algorithmic trading vendor Portware. The Brass application...