Securities Industry News articles from September 2004

Securities Industry News archives from September 2004

NYSE: Ready for Fall?(New York Stock Exchange)
September 6, 2004... As everyone knows, the world is full of unwritten rules. One of the big ones is that we get the summer off. Not "off" in the manner of Europeans who flee the cities in August, shut down businesses for weeks at a time and are otherwise amazingly...

Embracing Change on the Fixed-Income Desk.
September 6, 2004... The past few years have been a boon for fixed-income products worldwide, with governments aggressively pursuing a policy of lower interest rates. In fact, fixed-income desks have helped more than one bank achieve profitability in an otherwise...

Send a Shore Party.(outsourcing worries in US)
September 6, 2004... Correspondent As the saying goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity: U.S. outsourcing to Indiadespite the negative press, presidential contender John Kerry's talk of Benedict Arnold CEOs and the frequent tirades of CNN's Lou Dobbsis...

DTC Says Goodbye to Paper.(Depository Trust Co.,)
September 6, 2004... While much of the U.S. industry chatter about reducing the number of certificates in circulation has focused on requiring electronic ownership of accounts, the Depository Trust Co. (DTC) is also doing it the old-fashioned way. Starting in...

Acquisitions Drive Australian Clearing.(Capital Market Solutions )
September 6, 2004... The challenge of interfacing a back-office clearing system with Australia's sophisticated, fully disclosed, dematerialized central depository, Chess, continues to make growth by acquisition a key feature of Australia's vendor landscape. In...

Cooperation Is Catch in FIX Group Standards Push.(FIX Protocol Ltd.,)
September 6, 2004... Two years after the restructuring and expansion of FIX Protocol, Ltd. (FPL), development of a certification process for the group's real-time electronic transaction standard is moving forward in something less than real time. Six months...

A Road Map for Settlement Data?(standing settlement instructions (SSI) databases)
September 6, 2004... When the Global Straight-Through- Processing Association (GSTPA), designer of the Transaction Flow Manager, was forced to close down in November 2002 for lack of business, the problem of failed trade settlements did not go away. And while...

ISO 20022: Is Unifi-cation at Hand?
September 6, 2004... Why should the securities, banking and financial services sectors migrate together to the Universal Financial Industry Message Scheme (ISO 20022 Unifi), the latest standard for XML-based financial services messaging? And when will they have to...

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Birth of a New Exchange.(Interview)
September 20, 2004... It's safe to say that few markets face the kinds of challenges awaiting the reconstituted Iraq Stock Exchange (ISX). Nevertheless, the former Baghdad Stock Exchange (BSE) is moving to fully automate its pen-and-paper, open-outcry operations by...

Futures Industry Preps For Continuity Testing.
September 20, 2004... Less than a month before the industrywide disaster recovery testing set for Oct. 9, futures exchanges and their clearinghouses are unveiling many more details about their plans, hoping to boost participation from member firms. A briefing...

Watch Watch Lists.(Bank Secrecy Act of 1970)
September 20, 2004... The release of Bank Secrecy Act examination procedures for a customer identification program (CIP) to monitor anti-money laundering (AML) safeguards represents a step forward in bringing firms into compliance with the mandate signed into law...

Wanted: Exchange Head.(Toronto Stock Exchange)
September 20, 2004... Five and a half years ago-Monday, April 19, 1999, to be exact-the topic of early morning coffee conversation in Canadian offices was predictable: It was the day after Wayne Gretzky's last game in the NHL. Inside the financial community,...

Algorithmic Trading: Separating Fact From Fiction.
September 20, 2004... 2004 appears to be the year of the algorithm. Brokers are rabidly building, integrating and pushing their algorithmic offerings to the buy side, and algorithms are promising to fundamentally alter the equity trading. Despite the buzz,...

Hybrid Challenges: An Open Letter to NYSE Chief Executive Officer John Thain.
September 20, 2004... Dear Mr. Thain: Nearly six months ago, we wrote to you to provide both encouragement and suggestions as you set about the important task of automating the NYSE. On August 2, you announced the Hybrid initiative, which, among other things,...

What's Fair' in Fair-Value' Accounting?
September 20, 2004... The "fair-value" methodology proposed in late June by the Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) may well have been designed to simplify how firms measure the value of their assets and liabilities. The "fair" part, however, has been left...

Fail-Safe Sought as Spike Strikes Bonds.
September 20, 2004... After another set of record-setting spikes in "fails to receive" rocked the bond markets this spring, the Bond Market Association (BMA) set to work on new operational and compliance guidelines for brokers. The goal: standardize handling of...

Asia-Pac Securities Lending: Obstacles.
September 20, 2004... As the hedge fund industry grows, Asia-Pacific securities lending is also gradually picking up steam, prompting back offices to tackle disparate regulations through automation. The opportunities-and challenges-faced by Asia-Pac stock...

Fund Admin Tough Job.
September 20, 2004... Custodian banks, which historically handled traditional buy-side firms, have spent most of the past two years scrambling to make acquisitions that will put them into the potentially more lucrative hedge fund administration business. Even so,...

On The Record.
September 20, 2004... "Many of our members currently advise hedge funds and have found that registration is not overly burdensome or inconsistent with their investment strategies." -Investment Company Institute General Counsel Elizabeth Krentzman, on proposed...

Algorithmic Trading Puts the Focus on FIX.(Financial Information Exchange)
September 27, 2004... Any hedge fund trader with an arbitrage strategy can tell you that algorithmic trading is growing explosively. What's less well known is the key role that the FIX protocol is playing in that growth. But as quant-based trading continues to...

Questioning Authority: Amid a torrent of hedge fund comments, SEC's mandate is at issue.
September 27, 2004... Now that the Sept. 15 deadline for comments on the SEC's controversial proposal to require registration of hedge fund advisers is history, the agency is mulling the 135 submissions it received. Opponents have organized an impressive campaign,...

Paving the Way for Islamic Mart.
September 27, 2004... A viable market in Islamic financial instruments may soon emerge, as regulators and experts in Islamic law announce great progress in reconciling shari'a banking principles with Western regulations. But to what extent can this process be...

Securities Industry Management.(a magazine)
September 27, 2004... In the late '80s and early 90s there was a publication by the name of Securities Industry Management. The idea behind SIM (not to be confused with SIN, the nickname of this publication) was that most industry trade magazines were devoted to...

A Better Way to Start the Day: Why the Nasdaq Opening Cross Is Good News for Investors.
September 27, 2004... This week's launch of the Nasdaq Opening Cross, a new process for pre-market open trading and price discovery, marks another significant step in the evolution of the securities market toward a fairer playing field for all participants. At...

BNY in Risky Business With Wilshire.(Bank of New York)
September 27, 2004... The Bank of New York's Sept. 22 announcement of an agreement with Wilshire Analytics is the latest evidence that custodian banks are pushing the envelope to meet the growing risk-management demands of plan sponsors and investment managers. ...

Northern Nabs First Swedish Fund.
September 27, 2004... Inking an agreement with Svenska Handelsbanken, Northern Trust's debut in Scandinavian mutual fund circles made the Chicago-based bank the first outside custodian to win a mutual fund mandate in Sweden. The contract-involving $17 billion...

Euronext Taking Aim at AIM.(Alternative Investment Market)
September 27, 2004... Euronext-the self-styled "pan-European exchange" that has battled the London Stock Exchange for everything from ownership of Liffe to the hearts and dollars of Amsterdam brokers-has set its sights on what is arguably the LSE's most successful...

Soap Standards Ready to Boldly Go: But despite progress, Wall Street remains wary.(Simple Object Access Protocol)
September 27, 2004... In the beginning, there was Soap. The Simple Object Access Protocol (Soap) is the heart of Web services. Acting as as a universal translator, Soap lets any program, on any computer, swap data with and make requests of any other. It's like the...

BofA Finds Relief From Coding Load In Services Solution.(Banc of America Securities LLC)
September 27, 2004... Banc of America Securities LLC (BAS) spent a long time selecting the technologies on which to base its future front-office environment. Two goals-optimizing both the means of production and of execution-were key, says Rob Flatley, managing...

FIX Certification Bake-Off Starts to Rise.
September 27, 2004... Each of the four vendors selected by FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) to produce modules for its automated certification process-TransactTools, B2Bits, Aegis Software and Javelin Technologies-now claim to have achieved some form of certification for...

On The Record.
September 27, 2004... "The world economy is undergoing rapid financial revolution, dominated by the stock market rather than productive investment in agriculture and manufacturing activities.... If the culture of speculation and manipulation dominates the mind of...