Securities Industry News articles from October 2003

Securities Industry News archives from October 2003

Trade-Through Right Now With INET.
October 6, 2003... Island, the legendary ECN that challenged regulations and business models, will soon be gone, as its Instinet parent is about to merge the two trading systems and create the single largest player in the Nasdaq market. The merger of the...

Judge: 'Closed Bond Market' Not a Conspiracy.
October 6, 2003... A federal appeals court judge has ruled that the lack of transparency in the bond trading market does not represent a conspiracy by broker-dealers to block competition from new-entrant competitors seeking to publish pricing data-including...

Nasdaq Makeover Moves Into Overdrive.
October 6, 2003... Nasdaq, which has flooded the Securities and Exchange Commission with filings lately, scored some points last week when regulators expeditiously published for comment a controversial request to cap ECN fees on its SuperMontage platform. ...

SEC Plan May Hinge on Prime Brokers.(hedge fund regulations)
October 6, 2003... The Securities and Exchange Commission staff's recommendations to regulate hedge funds, released last week, would heap greater compliance and administrative duties on hedge fund advisers-creating business opportunities for their prime brokers....

SEC Issues Guidelines For U.S. Markets' Continuity Plans.
October 6, 2003... The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a "policy statement" outlining guidelines that exchanges and ECNs should implement for their business continuity plans no later than by the end of next year. Interestingly, the SEC is...

GTCR Moves to 'No Comment' on Amex.(GTCR Golder Rauner plan to acquire American Stock Exchange)
October 6, 2003... Departing from its steadfast support of two months ago, Chicago venture capital firm GTCR Golder Rauner now has nothing to say about its plan to acquire the troubled American Stock Exchange (Amex). "We cannot comment on any activity...

Reed Says Big Board to Retain SRO Role for Now.
October 6, 2003... The New York Stock Exchange, which is reassessing its operations under the highest scrutiny in its 211-year history, does not intend to split its regulatory and trading role at this stage. "We want to keep the regulatory function here,"...

Moneyline Seeks Independence Via IDC Data Deal.
October 6, 2003... Moneyline Telerate and Interactive Data Corp. (IDC) have signed a nonbinding letter of intent under which IDC will provide Moneyline with the datafeed it needs to become independent of its competitor, Reuters. As part of the prospective...

IM Providers Race to Address Identity Problem.(instant messages)
October 6, 2003... At first, Lee Blackmore, director of information technology at Stifel Nicolaus, didn't want to see brokers sending instant messages. "When all those new SEC rulings came out last year, we started looking for solutions and our first...

Sources: Citigroup to Take Over Oppenheimer Funds Biz.(Citigroup Global Transaction Services)
October 6, 2003... In what would provide a major boost to Citigroup's U.S. operations, its newly reorganized securities services business, Citigroup Global Transaction Services, is in talks with Oppenheimer Funds to take over the mutual fund giant's fund...

OM Divests Back-Office Offerings as Part of Revamp.
October 6, 2003... OM, now known as OMHex, has shed its Edinburgh, Scotland operations-home to two back-office product lines-as part of broad restructuring at the Swedish technology vendor. The decision to divest its OneWorld Settlement and OneWorld...

SunGard's Swift Link: More Connectivity, More Competition?
October 6, 2003... SunGard's launch of its MessageHub on Swift late last month, along with its new membership in the banking and securities industry message utility, will bring Swift connectivity to non-Swift members. It could also result in increased competition...

Survey Shows Clear FIX Support But XML Picture Hazy.
October 6, 2003... While a TowerGroup-FIX Protocol Ltd. survey released late last month shows overwhelming support for FIX's present, the possible future of the protocol-especially the prospects for convergence with the extensible markup language (XML)-received...

Dutch Blue-Chips Continue to Star in Platform Wars.
October 6, 2003... If some members of the Dutch brokerage community have come to feel like a soccer ball in the midst of a closely contested match, who could blame them? In the ebb and flow of Europe's ongoing stock exchange wars, Dutch brokers, along with their...

Blackberry: The True BCP Device in Blackout.
October 6, 2003... While the U.S. Treasury Department and the industry's Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security study the impacts of the blackout on the financial sector and decide what learned...

Technology Takes Center Stage in Mutual Fund Probes.
October 6, 2003... The spate of recent mutual fund probes, including investigations into irregularities and violations on breakpoint fees, market timing, broker-sponsored fund incentives and studies into soft dollars, have put compliance and best execution-and...

Fund Automates Data Aggregation.
October 6, 2003... New York City-based Elliott Management Corp. has confirmed that it has become the first hedge fund client of Cogency Software to go live with part of the vendor's data aggregation software, Wisdom for Hedge Funds, that will replace a...

SEC Censures Chicago Exchange for Lax Oversight.(Securities and Exchange Commission, Chicago Stock Exchange)
October 6, 2003... In the latest instance of regulators' zero tolerance for self-regulatory organizations' lax oversight, the Securities and Exchange Commission has cracked down on the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX) for failing to police its market. "This...

Crest Rolls Out Sec Lending Data; Impact Unclear.
October 6, 2003... Crest, the U.K's central depository, last week launched its long-awaited market data service for stock lending and borrowing, but some industry experts are questioning how much transparency the product offering will bring to this opaque...

Morgan Stanley Jumps on Grid Computing Bandwagon.
October 6, 2003... In its first implementation of grid technology, Morgan Stanley has ported some of its analytical applications to run on a grid infrastructure, and is looking to use the technology in other areas of the firm. The applications, previously...

Toronto Stock Exchange to Distribute CanDeal Prices.
October 6, 2003... In a development that could boost bond pricing transparency, CanDeal, Canada's electronic trading platform for government and other debt instruments, has inked a data distribution deal with its largest shareholder-the Toronto Stock Exchange...

Bear Stearns Taps Thomson.(Thomson One Banker )(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Bear Stearns has chosen Thomson Financial to provide its new Thomson One Banker workstation to about 180 senior investment bankers. The product, which was launched by Thomson in February, was rolled out early last month in New York,...

Siac, DTCC Networks Get Green Light for Bond Hub.(Securities Industry Automation Corp., Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. )(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... The Bond Market Association said it had selected a proposal by the Securities Industry Automation Corp. (Siac) and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) to combine their networks for a common message hub (CMH) to streamline bond...

Norway Sets Tax Reclaim Limit.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... In a surprise move, Norway's tax authority, the Norwegian Directorate of Taxes, said it will limit the reclaim period for withholding tax of up to 25 percent to three years, unless a longer time frame is specified in double tax treaties with...

NASD Offers Guidance on Fees.(National Association of Securities Dealers)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... The proposed guidance filed by the National Association of Securities Dealers last week about how to determine whether bond markup fees assessed to customers on trades are compliant is helpful, said Brandon Becker, a partner and head of the...

Amid Regulations, People Remain the Focus of BCP.
October 6, 2003... The industry was digesting a Securities and Exchange Commission proposal last week that trading operations of exchanges, ECNs and broker-dealers ensure recovery within one business day after a "wide-scale" disruption by the end of 2004....

FXall Adds Wachovia, Key Bank.
October 6, 2003... FXall has added two users to its IP-based foreign exchange trading platform: Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia Bank and Dayton, Ohio-based Key Bank. The newcomers bring the total number of banks using FXall to 44. Wachovia launched a...

Surveillance Shift: Amex in talks to outsource market oversight to NASD, say sources.
October 13, 2003... The American Stock Exchange, whose options specialists' operations are under regulatory scrutiny, is in talks to subcontract market surveillance to its parent, industry sources said. "Amex is in discussions with the NASD to outsource its...

New Bloomberg Policy Could Raise User Prices.
October 13, 2003... At a time when the securities industry is under stringent cost constraints and firms are looking for concessions on their market data bills, Bloomberg is shifting its policy to aggressively market a user-based licensing model rather than a...

Sources: SEC May Revamp Short-Sale Rule.
October 13, 2003... The Securities and Exchange Commission will soon introduce a single short-sale rule with a bid test across all U.S. equity markets and tighten brokers' requirements for investors who want to sell a stock short, according to sources close to...

IM Key Part of Changing Technology at Stifel Nicolaus.
October 13, 2003... It's an ironic twist of fate that just as instant messaging (IM) has taken off as a critical business tool in the workplace, regulators and legislators have imposed strict new rules about the responsibility of firms to monitor and store...

SEEKING THE DREAM exchange through experimental research.
October 13, 2003... Don't we all dream of the perfect exchange? Deutsche Boerse economist Miroslav Budimir tried to bring the dream closer to reality in his upcoming Ph.D. dissertation on "Information Dissemination on Securities Markets: Design and Experimental...

NASD Still Can't Shake Trading Issues.
October 13, 2003... Nearly four years after pledging to exit the transaction business to focus on regulatory services, the NASD is still mired in Byzantine trading issues involving its three feuding markets-Nasdaq, the ADF and the American Stock Exchange. The...

Citigroup Shake-Up Continues: Jaffee Set to Exit.
October 13, 2003... Sandy Jaffee, head of sales in Citigroup's financial institutions business for Global Transaction Services, will become the latest senior-level official to leave the firm amid a restructuring of its global securities services area, according to...

S&P Eyes Amex for Nasdaq Opening, Closing Prices.
October 13, 2003... In a blow to Nasdaq, which has seen its market share slip dramatically this year, Standard & Poor's has tapped the American Stock Exchange for a pilot program to provide closing prices for Nasdaq securities in the S&P 500 index. Under the...

No Formal Hub Agreement BMA and Siac/DTCC.
October 13, 2003... The Bond Market Association stressed last week that it had not formally selected a proposal by the Securities Information Automation Corp. (Siac) and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) to provide connectivity for a common message hub...

FIX Implementation Guide Targets Bond Market.
October 13, 2003... In an effort to increase the industry's awareness of the fixed-income functionality in the FIX protocol, FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) has released an implementation guide for potential FIX users, with a special emphasis on the bond market. The...

Proposed European Processing Standards Polarize Industry.
October 13, 2003... When the European System of Central Banks and the Committee of European Securities Regulators jointly released a set of 19 standards to be applied to custodian banks, central securities depositories and international central securities...

Custodian Banks only as good as their data.
October 13, 2003... The phrase "survival of the fittest" could apply to just about any industry, but over the past few years it has been especially fitting for the custody business, where the exigencies of scale have relegated several market players to the...

Outsourcing Takes on a New Twist.
October 13, 2003... The decision fund managers must make about whether to handle back-office administrative tasks internally or hand them over to third-party service providers isn't a new one, but what is new is the number of options available between the two...

Compliance Key For Custodians.(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... Enron's implosion had implications well beyond its investors and employees and custodian banks have been among those attempting to enter the fray. Almost all custodians today offer compliance products of one sort or another, of which even...

Australian Firms Make Regional Processing Push.
October 13, 2003... In a sector characterized by consolidation and compliance challenges, Australia-based firms like Berndale Securities and Fortis Clearing are seeking an edge over their Asia-Pacific processing rivals by offering regional custody-clearing...

CLS in Singapore Aided by Custodian Joint Venture.
October 13, 2003... As part of the addition in September of the Singapore dollar to the currencies supported by foreign exchange settlement system CLS, Singapore's major banks have created a new model for accessing CLS that could be adopted elsewhere. The...

SunGard Buys Rights to Recon.(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... SunGard Data Systems has dissolved its seven year-marketing partnership with CheckFree, allowing both companies to compete head on in the enterprisewide reconciliation space globally. SunGard eProcess Intelligence, a subsidiary of SunGard...

E-Mail Volumes, Regulations Challenge Broker-Dealers.
October 13, 2003... By 2007 the securities industry will handle more than 95.8 million e-mail messages per day, up dramatically from 1999's daily average of 26.9 million, according to TowerGroup, which said the increase represents a compound annual growth rate of...

TradeWeb to Test E-Settlement of Phone Trades.
October 13, 2003... Consortium-run bond-trading platform TradeWeb has begun beta-testing a system that would allow users to settle phone-based fixed-income trades electronically via submission into the firm's TradeXpress and AccountNet back-office processing...

Italy: Reducing Settlement Risk, Increasing Admin Burden?
October 13, 2003... Italy's central depository Monte Titoli last week confirmed it will phase in the long-awaited Express II system in December, a move which will reduce settlement risk but place greater administrative burden on local custodian banks and their...

BofA Tackles Late Trades; Regulators Seek Roadmap.
October 13, 2003... Bank of America said last week it will prepare a "package" of solutions, including operational initiatives and bolstered technology tools, to combat late trading abuses uncovered at the bank; at the same time, former regulators pursued...

Omgeo: CTM in Line With SIA Guidelines.
October 13, 2003... Omgeo last Friday released a new roadmap for the adoption of its Central Trade Manager model for central matching in the United States to meet the Securities Industry Association's recommendations and speed the otherwise sluggish implementation...

Nicoll to Exchanges: Hands Off All Trades.
October 20, 2003... Instinet CEO Ed Nicoll, who has long urged a fundamental reform of U.S. market structure, wants exchanges to stop interfering with trading and let market forces freely interact to set stock prices. If answered, Nicoll's call would lead to...

Cormack: Floors Often Trade Through ArcaEx.
October 20, 2003... The trade-through rule, which has come under fire amid mounting criticism of the specialist auction system, is violated thousands of times a day by the exchanges that are fighting to uphold it, according to Michael Cormack, president of the...

Nasdaq CEO Wants Market Reforms.
October 20, 2003... Robert Greifeld wasted no time turning Nasdaq into a customer-friendly marketplace, geared toward the needs of an industry where competition is red-hot and profit margins are thin. Since taking charge in mid-May, Greifeld has launched a...

Clearing Looms Large in Futures Exchange Fight.
October 20, 2003... While Eurex is using an anti-trust lawsuit to fight back against the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange's bid to block its new U.S. futures exchange, the German-Swiss market faces a battle to refute a number of concerns now...

Box Strikes Back: CEO Of Proposed Mart Answers Critics.
October 20, 2003... The Boston Stock Exchange's (BSE) proposal to launch an electronic derivatives platform, the Boston Options Exchange or BOX, has sparked a firestorm of criticism from its future rivals. The five U.S. options exchanges, including the...

Industry Learns From Treasury Note Fails.
October 20, 2003... In the wake of the recent, unprecedented settlement failures involving the May 10-year Treasury note, the Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing a letter addressing the issue, a source said. Observers blamed the situation on a...

Custodians Eye Pan-Nordic Offering Via Alliance.
October 20, 2003... Den norske Bank and Swedbank have extended their alliance from their home markets of Norway and Sweden to neighboring Finland in a deal with Oko Bank, which propels them into a regional Nordic offering. Den norske is the largest custodian...

Trade Group to Act on Giovannini Recommendations.
October 20, 2003... The European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA) has tapped Michael Kempe, a manager at U.K. depository Crest, to head a working group that will study how to conform to three of the recommendations made by the Giovannini group...

Think Tank Questions Financial Services Security.
October 20, 2003... Although financial services may be the most advanced of all critical U.S industrial sectors in its anti-terrorism preparedness, it still remains vulnerable to numerous types of attacks, from numerous sources, according to a recent report by the...

Cross Border Exchange-Capco Offer Messaging Hub.
October 20, 2003... The post-trade messaging space got a bit more crowded last week, as software provider Cross Border Exchange won approval to offer a turnkey solution as a Swift Electronic Trade Confirmation Provider and Swift Service Bureau through an alliance...

Front to Back, Credit Derivatives Automation Grows.
October 20, 2003... In another sign of the growing automation in the complex world of credit deriva- tives, over-the-counter settlement system SwapsWire is planning to add support for the asset class by early next month SwapsWire would represent the third...

Jury Still Out On Econometric Risk Platforms, Despite Nobel.
October 20, 2003... Growth in the use of Nobel-winning "econometrics" models as applied to risk and portfolio management applications has been credited with enabling banks and brokers to make more accurate investment decisions lately, particularly in bond trading....

New ATS for Block Trading Enters the Pipeline'.
October 20, 2003... There could be a new ATS next year, as Pipeline Trading Systems gave a preview of its upcoming facility for large orders at the Security Traders Association (STA)'s annual conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. last week. Pipeline hopes to join...

Nomura Builds Up Institutional Team.(Brief Article)
October 20, 2003... In the latest indication that Wall Street believes in the equity markets' recovery, Nomura Securities International is setting up a new U.S. equity sales and trading team. Led by Anthony Abenante as managing director, the team includes 11...

Next in Line in the Automation Parade: MT 100s.
October 20, 2003... Swift and its users have reached the home stretch of the move from the 25-year-old MT 100 payment messages to their MT 103 successors-a migration that will provide an increasing level of automation to another previously manual messaging...

Volante Supplying Underlying Tech for MSRB's RTRS.
October 20, 2003... Volante Technologies will provide Swift messaging and reporting applications for the Real-Time Transaction Reporting System (RTRS) of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), which Volante's CTO described recently to Securities...

Euroclear Plans Double Protection for Data Centers.
October 20, 2003... In what is considered a first in the post-trade processing arena, Euroclear is erecting two lines of defense for each of its data centers, even as the international depository is reducing the total number of its facilities from four to three....

Sources: INET to Quote on Nasdaq's SuperMontage?
October 20, 2003... INET, the super-ATS to soon result from the fusion of the Instinet and Island ECN platforms, is likely to quote on Nasdaq's SuperMontage, industry sources said. "INET will quote on SuperMontage. An announcement should come out very soon,"...

LSE Makes Headway in Netherlands.
October 20, 2003... The London Stock Exchange last week took on Euronext and the Deutsche Boerse by signing a deal with Clearnet to clear Dutch equity trades, which it will begin trading in the first quarter of next year. The LSE's decision to use Clearnet is...

Vendors Roll Out Standard Agency Bond Calculator.
October 20, 2003... TradeWeb, BrokerTec and Moneyline Telerate have rolled out calculators based on a Bond Market Association formula developed to make the callable agency market more liquid and transparent. Bloomberg, which offers a calculator based on a...

NYSE's New ITS Rule : Argues speed is not synonymous with best execution.
October 27, 2003... The New York Stock Exchange is readying a new proposal for an exemption to the trade-through rule, one of the key market structure issues that the Securities and Exchange Commission intends to ponder in the near future. "We have fine-tuned...

Questions Remain Over Euroclear Restructuring.
October 27, 2003... Euroclear's proposal to separate its cross-border settlement house, Euroclear Bank, from its local depository systems appears to have addressed some of the gripes of some of its local custodian bank participants and the European Central Bank,...

Instinet to Launch Block-Trading CBX.
October 27, 2003... Instinet, which is separating its brokerage and ATS businesses, will soon launch two new brokerage products, including a block-trading facility with the unique ability to post quotes on multiple markets. Continuous Block Crossing (CBX) will...

Critics Say LSE Needs to Close A Cross-Border Deal-Any Deal.
October 27, 2003... Executives, no less than politicians or athletes, often have their defining moments. It is quite possible that London Stock Exchange CEO Clara Furse is about to confront hers. After many months of relative quiet, the LSE is now in an...

SEC Chair's Comments: Harbinger for reforms in market structure?
October 27, 2003... Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson gave a few hints about looming market structure reforms when he addressed the Senate subcommittee on Securities and Investments on Oct. 15. The SEC chief identified four areas that...

Will Lawyers Knock Out the Specialists?
October 27, 2003... The specialist system may face a bigger threat than the repeal of the trade-through rule-a flurry of class action lawsuits spurred by charges of trading violations. The ink was barely dry on the New York Stock Exchange's announcement of...

Litigious Wall Street.
October 27, 2003... Earlier this month, Nasdaq and Eurex filed suits against their competitors, adding to a litany of litigation on the Street. To cite a few: * Eurex, the Swiss-German derivatives giant, is suing the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago...

DTC, NSCC Seek to Merge Settlement Platforms.
October 27, 2003... The Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for approval to merge its two settlement platforms-one for Depository Trust Company and another for the National Securities Clearing Corp.-into a single...

SIA Seeks Standard Rules to Regulate Corporate Actions.
October 27, 2003... The Securities Industry Association's corporate actions subcommittee has released recommendations for standardizing corporate actions that will not stop with migration to an automated environment; they include developing best-practice...

MTS Subsidiaries Multiply in Danish Debt Market.
October 27, 2003... MTS, the parent firm of several European electronic government bond trading systems, has expanded into Denmark through one of its part-owned subsidiaries in a move some believe pits MTS Associated Markets against MTS subsidiary EuroMTS. ...

Expect Tougher Cyber Measures From Regulators.
October 27, 2003... More coercive and strengthened regulatory and industry measures aimed at bolstering the cyber security of financial services are on the way, experts told Congress last week, as both financial firms and their service providers will be held to...

Software, Outsourcing Security Standards Weighed.
October 27, 2003... Government and industry groups will focus on measures to ensure that outsourcing and software providers meet the same tough security and reliability standards required of financial firms. That's welcome news for the many financial firms that...

Post-Blackout Heat on Telecoms to Boost Services.
October 27, 2003... Regulators and industry members said last week that the cascading impact of the nation's largest blackout had been needlessly severe, and that in certain cases telecom contingencies proved "wholly inadequate" due to problems and failures of...

CBOT Wins Green Light for Clearing Link with CME.
October 27, 2003... The Chicago Board of Trade last week received approval from the Commodity Futures Clearing Commission as a designated clearing organization (DCO), paving the way for the exchange to outsource its clearing operations to the Chicago Mercantile...

Market Structure Debate Heats Up at Hearing.
October 27, 2003... The House subcommittee on capital markets held a hearing on "Reviewing U.S. capital market structure: The New York Stock Exchange and related issues" on Oct. 16. At the same time, the world's largest market announced disciplinary sanctions and...