Securities Industry News articles from October 2004

Securities Industry News archives from October 2004

The Education of a CCO.(chief compliance officer)
October 4, 2004... The SEC's new compliance rule for mutual funds, whose implementation deadline arrives tomorrow, focuses primarily on fund companies and investment advisers. But third-party providers-the firms that provide the nuts-and-bolts back-office...

ADP Clearing: Whole New Ballgame.(Automatic Data Processing Inc.-management)
October 4, 2004... Automatic Data Processing (ADP) is seeking to fill top posts in its embryonic clearing unit, and emerging details suggest the company plans to offer correspondents more services and more options for using them-a strategy that its largest...

JP Morgan: Ins and Outs.(J.P. Morgan Chase and Co)
October 4, 2004... Since JP Morgan Chase ended its $5 billion outsourcing agreement with IBM, there has been considerable interest-but few straight answers-about the nuts and bolts of the abrupt transition and the rationale behind it. Some are seeing it as a blow...

Remember Buy American'?(importance of outsourcing in America)
October 4, 2004... Four years ago few would have guessed that offshore outsourcing would be an issue in the next presidential campaign. But in a way, the issue is tailor-made for the politician, since outsourcing can so easily be viewed through passionately...

Canada: Europe's Gateway to North America.
October 4, 2004... For any U.K. or European company looking for a North American foothold that may not be quite ready for Sarbanes-Oxley, U.S. GAAP and corporate justice Mississippi-style, Canada is the best option. We know what it means to be just outside their...

Sharing the Burden of Mutual Misdeeds.(mutual fund industry-analysis)
October 4, 2004... Little over a year ago, New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer announced a settlement with Canary Capital, a hedge fund that had profited handsomely from rapid trading in mutual fund shares-trading that "harmed the retirement and...

FIX Group Inventories Truant Tags.(financial information exchange-electronic communication of trade)
October 4, 2004... The seven-volume FIX specification is a monument to the ten-year history of its development. But the number of user-defined tags that have been created in that time may fill even more volumes. Until now, no one has accounted for them. Now,...

Glitch-Free Monte Titoli Mulls Next Moves.(planning of waiver of penalties)
October 4, 2004... After intense lobbying from member firms, Italian central depository Monte Titoli has agreed to both permanently waive any penalties for failed transactions and introduce a ten-minute grace period for processing trades within its real-time...

CFTC's Notion of a Future in Doubt.(Commodity Futures Trading Commission-management)
October 4, 2004... What is a futures contract? The answer may seem intuitively obvious, but a recent decision by a federal appeals court has rekindled a longstanding and entangled definitional dispute involving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the courts...

ABN Amro, Barclays Widen AML Fight.(anti-money laundering technology usage in financial institutions and banking industry)
October 4, 2004... Globalization may lower costs and improve the standard of living of people around the world, but it definitely creates some challenges for banks when it comes to fighting financial crime. "Anybody can move into any bank in the world and in...

Blade Server Technology: Test-Driving PowerEdge: Options firm finds gotchas' and potential in first generation.(web servers-usage)
October 4, 2004... Data centers can be hot, crowded places where computer servers are packed together to provide enough processing power to handle high-volume trading and other functions. That's because in the data center business, space, like time, is money. ...

On The Record.(reports of Securities and Exchange Commission)
October 4, 2004... "We have no desire to regulate hedge funds as investment companies under the Investment Company Act, which could restrict their investment concentrations and leverage strategies. Nor do we want to require disclosure of their proprietary...

Sun To Set on 12b-1?(direct brokerage, rule)
October 11, 2004... The ban on directed brokerage that takes effect on Oct.14 has widespread support from the fund industry: Of 33 comments received, 23 supported the final rule. The SEC's position that "these arrangements are today far from the benign practice...

Omnibus Action?(onibus accounts, analysis)
October 11, 2004... The late trading and market timing issues that have plagued the mutual fund industry over the last year appear to be moving toward a regulatory resolution by year-end. Sources say that action on omnibus accounts, hailed by some as a panacea for...

Merere's Moment.(Joel Merere )
October 11, 2004... When Joel Merere took a junior administrative spot at Banque de France in 1974, he never expected to find himself playing such a pivotal role in Europe's clearance and settlement arena thirty years later. After all, it wasn't until 1998...

Something Old and New.(presidential debates)
October 11, 2004... In contrast to Senator John Edwards' barb in last week's debate against Vice President Dick Cheney that "a long resume does not equal good judgment," we like to think that here at Securities Industry News, we have both experience and judgment....

Directed Brokerage Ban Is Bad for the Little Guy.
October 11, 2004... On Aug. 18, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously to ban directed brokerage as it pertains to the shelf-space placement of mutual funds within the brokerage distribution channel-this despite a number of comments recommending...

Solaris: Open-Book Test.(open source software)
October 11, 2004... Sun executives have declared their intention to release an open-source version of Solaris in a number of venues recently, including Sun's recent "take back Wall Street" road show in New York. But Sun has yet to set a timeline for doing it, and...

XBRL for Edgar Now, but FDIC Will Wait and See.(Extensible Business Reporting Language)(Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation)
October 11, 2004... The securities industry took another step toward fully automated submission of regulatory filings when the SEC submitted a rule proposal last month to allow regulated firms, on a voluntary basis, to file information using the extensible...

Clearing Row Leaves Europe Unsettled.(International depository Clearstream)
October 11, 2004... International depository Clearstream's decision to decouple order routing and processing fees for its investment fund platform has resurrected industry talk about its financial viability and that of rival pan-European fund platform FundSettle,...

FpML Seeks Self-Certification.(Financial Products Mark-up Language)
October 11, 2004... Five years after the inception of the financial products mark-up language (FpML)-an XML-based data transport standard designed for the OTC derivatives market-the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) is planning to establish a...

Wholesale Muscle in a Retail World.
October 11, 2004... When Spear Leeds & Kellogg recently converted a large retail-oriented brokerage firm to its clearing platform-building new technology to meet the client's needs-it sent a signal to other clearing firms catering to retail-oriented correspondents...

Winners and Losers In European Post-Trade Processing.
October 11, 2004... It is the best of times, it is the worst of times in the changing world of European post-trade processing. The diversity of market rules and practices across 25 countries stands in the way of a single, unified European capital market. The...

Climate Change For Hedge Funds: Custodians seek firm footing in shifting regulatory sands.
October 11, 2004... It's hardly big news that custodian banks have entered the hedge fund administration arena. What remains a wild card, though, is just how much their bottom lines will be bolstered by regulatory changes taking place on both sides of the...

Australian Messaging Interoperates.
October 11, 2004... Interoperability is alive and well in Australia's financial industry, as both buy and sell sides adopt open systems and standards to improve business and market efficiencies. "The old days of system providers protecting what they perceived as...

Swift IP Delays Spur Competition.
October 11, 2004... Swift's two-year migration from its old X.25 network to the Swift IP has taken it through some rough country, replete with tight timelines and the demise of a deal with former technology vendor Global Crossing-not to mention the customer...

Ghost Messages Linger in the Swift Machine.
October 11, 2004... The four-year-long migration from the ISO 7775 messaging standard to ISO 15022 was expected to result in a new foundation for messaging in the securities industry: a single standard for messaging in the clearance and settlement space that would...

A Kinder, Gentler Regulator?
October 11, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission, according to sources who work closely with the agency, is heading toward significantly softer versions of proposed rules designed to thwart marketing timing and late trades. The rules will likely arrive...

STP Is Dead ... Long Live STP!'.(Straight Through Processing)
October 18, 2004... Almost a year has passed since financial services consultancy TowerGroup issued its now infamous report, "A Eulogy for STP and the Asset Manager." The report concluded that the meaning of the ubiquitous acronym had been devalued by...

Swift at Pains to Grow.
October 18, 2004... Despite an increase in traffic that contributed to a third consecutive rebate for Swift member firms, the messaging coop still has a long way to go to convince the securities industry it's here to stay. Much of the talk from Swift's...

Two-Percent Non-Solution.
October 18, 2004... One of the most critical parts of the SEC's package of mutual fund reforms is its proposal to impose a 2-percent redemption fee on mutual fund shares held for no more than five business days. The proposed fee is the centerpiece of the SEC's...

Limit Orders: Grounds for Concern.
October 18, 2004... We all know that in an order-driven market, limit orders provide liquidity. But does our market structure really encourage them? In the market structure debates of the past three decades, how much attention has even been paid to limit orders?...

Embracing Mistakes.
October 18, 2004... Acouple of issues ago (Oct. 4) we wrote in this space about the unexpected emergence of offshore outsourcing as an issue in presidential politics. Unexpected, we are saying, because even though the financial services industry has been at the...

Character and Corporate Catastrophe.
October 18, 2004... Six years ago a research team at the Tuck School launched an exhaustive study of the human factor in business failures. We wanted to move beyond ad hoc, case-by-case explanations of failure to expose the underlying causes of corporate...

Size Matters as Citi Looks To Enter Clearing.
October 18, 2004... Given that a handful of correspondent clearinghouses keep getting bigger and bigger, the fact that they'll soon be confronting a start-up competitor would normally be a non-event. This start-up, however, is being built by the biggest financial...

Swift Faces Down Challenges.
October 18, 2004... Swift's annual Sibos conference in Atlanta last week kicked off with a barrage of challenges from one of the organization's largest customers, which the network quickly turned into an opportunity to tout its merits. "Who needs Swift, when...

Canada Issues Passport to Nowhere.
October 18, 2004... The continuing efforts of the Canadian securities industry to harmonize its fragmented regulatory system is beginning to resemble another Quixotic quest-the Boston Red Sox and their perennial bid to win the World Series. Both are possible, but...

Ofex Down, Jenkins Out.
October 18, 2004... Ofex, the London exchange created to help smaller companies raise money, is in serious need of some capital of its own. The mostly unregulated market, founded in 1995 as a rival to the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market...

Grid Sale Marks Rise of New Sun Model.(Sun Fire )
October 18, 2004... Bucking the trend towards generic Linux and Wintel boxes for grid-managed server farms, French firm Equity and Derivatives BNP Paribas has picked Sun Fire servers for its risk-management computing grid, the Silicon Valley network computing...

Newcomb Leaves Ofac in Limbo.(Richard Newcomb)(Office of Foreign Asset Control )
October 18, 2004... Last spring, it was widely expected that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)-the arm of the Treasury Department that monitors money laundering and other financial crimes-would ease its requirements on broker-dealers and other...

RIXML to Utilize XBRL Functionality.(Research information exchange markup language)( extensible business reporting language)
October 18, 2004... Research information exchange markup language (RIXML)-a research standard based on the extensible markup language (XML)-will incorporate functionality from an XML standard in a related field, but the consortium of buy-side firms, sell-side...

Investment Titans Say Yes to Speech Recognition.
October 18, 2004... Speech recognition technology is coming of age. Premier financial services firms are finding viable ways to leverage improvements in the technology- including enhanced abilities to understand different accents and dialects, filter out...

On The Record.(Brief Article)
October 18, 2004... "When Congress created the National Market System, it did not intend to create a nationalized market system." -SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, speaking earlier this month at the Security Traders Association Annual Meeting in Boca Raton, Fla. ...

Trading in Transition.
October 25, 2004... Transition management was once a relatively simple task. Corporates or pension plans looking to part ways with an underperforming asset manager, or switch their investment strategy, had only to sell the relevant assets, deliver the cash to the...

Barbash the Contrarian.
October 25, 2004... Barry P. Barbash, a partner in the law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP, remains a gargantuan presence in the world of mutual fund regulation. But Barbash doesn't pull any punches. Chairing a panel of regulators at the Security Industry...

Citi's Compliance Collapse.(Citibank)
October 25, 2004... This hasn't been a good year for Citibank. On Sept. 29, the company's wealth management office and three satellite offices in Japan were shut down after Japan's Financial Services Agency found instances of misconduct. Citibank was also banned...

For Immediate Release.(press releases)
October 25, 2004... If we tried counting the number of press releases we receive in a given week, we would probably have little time to get much else done. They come from brokerages, investment banks, asset managers, vendors, intermediaries, third-party providers,...

Algorithmic Trading: Brokers Race to Mediocrity.(trends in commerce)
October 25, 2004... The securities industry's faith in its newfound religion of algorithmic trading is misguided. Brokerage firms who see a buy-side windfall in algorithmic trading may be courting disaster. Many firms added algorithmic trading-a staple of...

Cusip Fee Feud Coming to a Close.
October 25, 2004... The feud between the Cusip Service Bureau (CSB)-the North American securities numbering agency run by Standard & Poor's-and the Information Providers User Group (IPUG), a European data-management trade group, appears to be near resolution,...

Turkey Zeroes Out Zeros.(financial management)
October 25, 2004... With the redenomination of the Turkish lira only a few months away, securities processing professionals and information vendors are scrambling to implement a broad array of IT and business changes. In doing so, they are looking back to...

IFX Payment Kernel Rollout Complete.(Interactive Financial Exchange)
October 25, 2004... A new version of the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) specification-an XML-enabled standard for payments-was released earlier this month, following the June release of the International Standards Team Harmonization (ISTH)-sanctioned payment...

The China Bulls.(foreign investment laws)
October 25, 2004... As Asia opens its options shops, foreign investors wait for the sleeping giant's future to unfoldAnumber of Asian countries are taking big steps-some bigger than others-toward opening up their futures markets to foreign investors, passing new...

Structured Investments Migrate To New Markets.
October 25, 2004... Investors in the retail, private banking and institutional markets are increasingly turning to so-called structured products, in search of improved returns as well as guarantees against capital erosion. The growth of the market in these...

On The Record.(Securities Industry Association Mutual Funds Conference)
October 25, 2004... "If the SEC studied investor desires, they would find that [investors] don't need half the information that is out there." -Shearman & Sterling LLP Partner Barry Barbash, speaking at the Securities Industry Association Mutual Funds Conference...