Securities Industry News articles from September 2005

Securities Industry News archives from September 2005

Upstart FX Platforms Hold Ground: An online operator creates a new option in foreign exchange trading.(Oanda launched the BoxOption an FXTrade e-trading platform)
September 5, 2005... Big financial institutions dominate the biggest of the global markets--foreign exchange--and have fueled the development of large-scale, highly efficient electronic trading platforms, but they can't claim a monopoly on the technology. Upstart...

Bayou's Brokerage Under a Cloud.
September 5, 2005... Bayou Group, the collapsed Connecticut hedge fund that is under investigation by state and federal authorities, continued to operate despite numerous red flags that should have been visible to regulators and to prominent institutions and funds...

Miffed About MiFID.
September 5, 2005... Last month, the European Banking Federation joined the chorus of critics of the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). In a paper submitted as part of the European Commission's consultation on MiFID, the trade...

Cycles of Competition.
September 5, 2005... Late last year, the Deutsche Borse initiated a proposal--its second in a half decade--to merge with the London Stock Exchange. Close on its heels came an expression of interest from Euronext, which already controls equities exchanges in...

Trading Technology: Good vs. Great.
September 5, 2005... Securities trading is at the vanguard of emerging technologies. And why shouldn't it be? There are few scenarios for software as universal in scope or absolutely critical, in terms of risk, as the world's exchanges or stock markets. After all,...

CME Enhances Trading Platform.
September 5, 2005... Last month, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) announced technological enhancements to its trading platform designed to expand functionality and trading opportunities. The exchange's enhanced options system (EOS) for trading CME Eurodollar...

BOX Backers Building BeX: As Regulation NMS kicks in, a new electronic bourse is born in Boston.
September 5, 2005... In a deal that echoes the Philadelphia Stock Exchange's (PHLX) recent partnership with new investors, the Boston Stock Exchange has announced plans with Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Fidelity Brokerage Co. and Lehman Brothers to launch...

CBOT Announces Platform Upgrades.
September 5, 2005... The Chicago Board of Trade will upgrade its electronic trading platform, using the LiffeConnect technology from Euronext.liffe, in the second week of October, CBOT president and CEO Bernard Dan said Aug. 29. Noting that the exchange began...

Nasdaq To Offer Options Connectivity and Routing.
September 5, 2005... As the New York Stock Exchange positions itself to enter the options market through its merger with Archipelago, the Nasdaq Stock Market has said it will begin to offer customers connectivity and routing to options exchanges in the first...

Bear Stearns Offers FX Connectivity to Charles River Users.
September 5, 2005... Bear Stearns Forex has opened its market for spot, swap and forward transactions to customers of order management systems (OMS) leader Charles River Development. According to Charles River, the Bear Stearns Companies subsidiary is the...

SS&C Buys Integral's MarginMan.
September 5, 2005... U.S. investment management software shop SS&C Technologies has strengthened its foothold in the foreign exchange market by buying MarginMan, a business operated by forex technology specialist Integral Development Corp., for $5.6 million in cash...

Instinet Adopts Instant Messaging Package.
September 5, 2005... Instinet has signed on to IMTrader for real-time trading and communications via instant messaging. The New York-based institutional brokerage will be using the IMTrader solution as part of its client communications infrastructure for its...

XML: Time for Desperate Measures?
September 5, 2005... The slow rollout of XML messaging standards in the financial services industry probably goes beyond the time-to-market issues that often plague newly introduced technologies. There is clearly a gap between anything that could be called...

RIXML Rising: Research Filtration Makes a Comeback.
September 5, 2005... The research information extensible markup language (RIXML) surfaced nearly five years ago and, following a period of competition with the investment research markup language (IRML), a competing standard in the research collection and filtering...

Optimizing Optimization.
September 5, 2005... The field of portfolio optimization--the use of mathematical techniques to adjust an investment strategy according to desired risk levels and returns--has been rife with both academic debate and technological innovation since Nobel...

SMAs Go Mainstream, Fuel a Tech Bandwagon: Welcome to the brave new world of overlay portfolio management.
September 5, 2005... Separately managed accounts (SMAs), once within reach only of the well-to-do, are riding technological advances to reach the mass-investor market--or at least the segment characterized as mass affluent. Research firm TowerGroup predicts that...

OMX To Sell Bank and Brokerage Technology Business.
September 5, 2005... OMX, the Stockholm-based owner and operator of several major securities markets in northern Europe, announced plans to divest its technology business serving banks and brokerage firms. The move will focus the company's OMX Technology unit more...

Schonfeld Buys Day-Trading Innovator.(Schonfeld Securities L.L.C. acquires Electronic Trading Group)
September 5, 2005... Consolidation is continuing in the brokerage industry, this time at the end of the spectrum where firms move millions of shares a day on behalf of active and professional traders. Schonfeld Group agreed late last month to acquire Electronic...

Equities for ISE? Single-Stop Exchanges?
September 5, 2005... With its announcement last month that it is exploring participation in the Consolidated Tape Association (CTA) plan and the over-the-counter/unlisted trading privileges (OTC/UTP) plan, the all-electronic International Securities Exchange (ISE)...

Names in the News.
September 5, 2005... Texas Two-Step Sixteen years into her career with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Katherine S. Addleman has been named associate district administrator for enforcement in the regulator's Fort Worth office, which has jurisdiction...

ISLA's Richard Steele: A Myth Surrounds Securities Lending.
September 5, 2005... The multi-trillion dollar securities lending market has been the focus of much criticism over the past two years. Some corporate executives claim it has contributed to the disenfranchisement of investors and undermined corporate governance;...

Regulators Are Cautious As Clearers Outsource.
September 19, 2005... As the correspondent clearing industry works to open a new market in outsourcing--as many as a half-dozen large financial institutions are negotiating with self-clearing broker-dealers to outsource many back-office functions, if not the...

Technology To CDS Rescue.(credit default swaps )
September 19, 2005... The credit derivatives market has grown 900 percent in three years, to $8.4 trillion--outpacing the industry's ability to keep up with the administration of highly complex instruments that often involve faxes, phone calls and scribbled notes....

Communicator Speeds Tie-Out.
September 19, 2005... Communicator has launched what is believed to be the first system that provides same-day tie-out, or reconciliation, for over-the-counter derivatives trades. Delivered via a secure Web site with an audit trail, the White Plains, N.Y....

Harmonization Static.
September 19, 2005... Charlie McCreevy doesn't like the costs of clearing and settlement. The European Union's internal market commissioner issued what sounded like an ultimatum last week when he told a conference in Luxembourg: "The next six months are crucial. As...

Relegation Is Not An Option.
September 19, 2005... The English soccer season every May generates enormous fan enthusiasm for the matches played by the league's lowliest teams. The reason is relegation, the mechanism that drops the bottom three clubs in the 20-member Premier League down to the...

Bayou Fallout Apparent at SIA Confab.(Securities Industry Association)
September 19, 2005... The still unfolding scandal at the Stamford, Conn. hedge fund Bayou Group will spawn multiple lawsuits, probes by state and federal regulators, heightened scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission and increased due diligence by...

Fundtech Makes Leap Into Securities Arena.(TradePlus a banking software from Fundtech)
September 19, 2005... Fundtech, a software company that made its mark in the wholesale bank payments business and as a Swift service bureau, has unveiled plans to expand into securities messaging. At the Swift Sibos conference this month, Fundtech announced the...

New FIX Protocol Hits High Market-Data Speeds.
September 19, 2005... FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) has released the initial results from the market data optimization working group's (MDOWG) effort to improve the dissemination of market data. The so-called proof of concept was based on tests of MDOWG's new...

BNY's Bodart Eyes Global Transformation.(Interview)
September 19, 2005... International harmonization of market rules and practices took center stage at the Swift cooperative's annual Sibos conference this month in Copenhagen. Italian fund management executive Alberto Giovannini, who as head of an eponymous European...

Multi-asset Consolidation In Sight.
September 26, 2005... Now that electronic infrastructures are well entrenched in the equities and fixed-income markets, with foreign exchange and derivatives of both listed and over-the-counter securities not far behind, are market participants ready to move all...

Sun Powers Up, Cools Down for Wall Street.(market share of Sun Microsystems Inc )
September 26, 2005... A year ago, Sun Microsystems, a venerable supplier of powerful financial workstations that had lost its way in the weakened technology market of the early 2000s, proclaimed its comeback in a flashy media event titled "Take Back Wall Street."...

Transition Managers on Defensive.(Greenwich Associates)(Northern Trust Co)
September 26, 2005... Consulting firm Greenwich Associates put out a report this month questioning the efficacy of buy-side portfolio transition management, and some of the leaders in that business aren't happy about it. The report, focusing on how plan sponsors...

Touching the Bases of Risk.
September 26, 2005... Call it coincidence, but two former presidents of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are showing considerable prowess at fixing things--and big things at that. Paul A. Volcker, who held the New York Fed's top job from 1975 to 1979 (before...

No Sign of Decline in eFX Allure.(reports on Foreign Exchange market)
September 26, 2005... A constant rush of investors into the foreign exchange market continues to spawn new electronic trading platforms reminiscent of the late 1990s boom in the day trading of equities. MBT Technologies is apparently the latest to jump in. Its MB...

Instant Messaging's Big Risk: Too Much Trust.
September 26, 2005... In the short span of two years, instant messaging (IM) has become one of the fastest-growing communications media of all time, and in the business world, the financial services industry is among the earliest and fastest adopters. But its...

BT Radianz Signs Euronext.
September 26, 2005... Financial industry extranet operator BT Radianz said it has signed an agreement with the cross-border Euronext exchange organization to facilitate access to market data. "Euronext is a key trading venue, one of the three major markets that...

Edelstein To Head New BT Unit.
September 26, 2005... Howard Edelstein, president and CEO of extranet provider BT Radianz, is taking charge of a new financial industry business unit within BT Global Services. The unit, BT Global Financial Services, will combine BT Radianz with BT Trading...

Nymex Sells Stake, Gives Tech Nod for London.
September 26, 2005... The New York Mercantile Exchange made two key moves in as many weeks, selecting private equity firm General Atlantic to take a minority stake and trading technology leader IPC as communications systems and services supplier for its London...

CBOE To Offer "Weeklys," Sets Plans for Demutualization.
September 26, 2005... The Chicago Board Options Exchange has announced that it will launch a new type of option on Oct. 28. To be known as "weeklys," the product will have a life of one week, listing on Friday and expiring the following Friday, thus providing a way...

Sybase Taking Aim at Capital Markets.
September 26, 2005... The financial industry's voracious appetite for data has virtually every major computer and software company and a host of niche systems specialists scrambling to get bigger, better-performing systems into the market. It's a competition that...

Euroclear's Kuhnel: Wrestling With the Numbers.
September 26, 2005... The Association of National Numbering Agencies (Anna) was launched in Brussels in 1991 to promote the use of international securities identification numbers (ISINs) for uniquely identifying financial instruments. Fourteen years later, local and...

Sun's Bechtolsheim: Serving Up the Servers.
September 26, 2005... While reaching to revive some of its old glory, Sun Microsystems brought back some of its old talent. Andy Bechtolsheim, who co-founded the company in 1982 along with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, technologist William Joy and current CEO...