Securities Industry News articles from September 2006

Securities Industry News archives from September 2006

With Hedge Fund Rule Sidelined, Two-Year Lockups Are Rolled Back.
September 4, 2006... The Securities and Exchange Commission's hedge fund registration rule, which took effect in February but was struck down in June by a federal appeals court, offered hedge fund advisers a way to sidestep the regulation: They could lock up...

GlobeOp, Administration Master, Looks Beyond Fund Basics.(GlobeOp Financial Services)(Hans Hufschmid)(Company overview)
September 4, 2006... GlobeOp Financial Services, an independent technology provider and hedge fund administrator with $99 billion of assets under its purview, is no stranger to market meltdowns, volatility-even an epic hedge fund crisis. According to CEO Hans...

As the World Discovers Risk, RiskMetrics Races Ahead.(RiskMetrics Group)(Ethan Berman)(Company overview)
September 4, 2006... The "Seinfeld" television series was a cultural landmark for many, and one 1996 episode had particular significance for Ethan Berman. "George walked into Jerry's apartment with a big book under his arm and announced, 'I'm going to be a risk...

Panel Proposes NYSE Proxy Rule Changes: Discretionary voting could be eliminated by January 2008.(New York Stock Exchange-)
September 4, 2006... A New York Stock Exchange-sponsored committee has recommended a sweeping overhaul of the Big Board's decades-old proxy rules, calling for prohibition of so-called discretionary voting for corporate directors and further analysis of fees for...

Adapting to a Changing Trading Landscape.(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive )
September 4, 2006... We are working in an era where European financial markets are undergoing significant change. This is particularly true in the arena of stock exchanges--one of the pillars of a nation's financial community--where cross-border consolidation and...

Vulnerability in Treasuries.(Brief article)
September 4, 2006... The Federal Reserve's auctions of U.S. Treasury securities are at the heart of one of Wall Street's most vital businesses. But the computer systems that link the 22 primary dealers in the auction process have significant security flaws,...

Family Affairs.
September 4, 2006... Russell Wasendorf Sr., chairman and CEO of Chicago futures brokerage Peregrine Financial Group, is the founder of the journal SFO (Stocks, Futures & Options), has written six books about futures and commodities trading, and owns Chicago eatery...

Reprieve in Utah.(Brief article)
September 4, 2006... The Securities Industry Association (SIA), among others, prevailed on Utah's securities regulator to postpone the effective date of a law requiring broker-dealers to report failures to deliver securities supporting short-sale transactions on a...

Market-Timing Solution.(SunGard Data Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
September 4, 2006... SunGard Data Systems has signed a customer of its SunGard Transaction Network (STN) to use its system for enabling mutual fund compliance with regulations designed to deter market timing. New York-based CMC Interactive, a highly automated...

UNX Lured an Architect Away From ITG: Harrison calls move unexpected' after being attracted to firm's people, technology.(interview with J. Scott Harrison )(Interview)
September 4, 2006... Advanced technology for institutional trading is in demand, judging not only by the pressures on traders to improve performance but also by such acquisitions as Townsend Analytics by Lehman Brothers last December and Lava Trading by Citigroup...

Algos and More: How the Buy Side Is Innovating.(algorithms)
September 4, 2006... In increasingly complex markets, the buy side is constantly finding new ways to utilize and integrate electronic trading tools to ensure that the trading process is effectively managed. Firms have access to an array of proprietary and vendor...

Nasdaq Certifying Market Makers.(Nasdaq Stock Market)
September 4, 2006... Nasdaq Stock Market plans to launch a certification program to recognize market makers who offer the highest levels of quoting and execution quality in Nasdaq-listed securities. Called the Select Market Maker program, it will begin in the...

High-Tech Chinese Province Attracts U.S. Exchanges.
September 4, 2006... In 1986, New York Stock Exchange chairman John Phelan visited China and met with leader Deng Xiaoping. In 1997, Chinese president Jiang Zemin returned the favor, coming to New York and ringing the opening bell--a gesture repeated in 2004 by...

FIX Panel Looks to Automate Confirmation Paper Trail.(FIX Protocol Ltd.)
September 4, 2006... A FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) working group on the Securities and Exchange Commission's Rule 10b-10 is confronting a familiar obstacle--the regulatory requirement for paper records--as it develops a standard for fixed-income trade confirmation...

Regulations Rule: Despite differences, Reg NMS and MiFID converge on execution and require metrics.(Regulation National Market System)(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive )
September 4, 2006... Regulation National Market System (NMS) in the U.S. and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) in Europe are pushing the notion of best execution to center stage, and transaction cost analysis (TCA) will inevitably follow. That...

OMS, EMS Have Best Execution in Common.(Order management systems)(execution management systems)
September 4, 2006... Order management systems (OMS) and execution management systems (EMS) have distinct functions around which competing sets of software suppliers are clustered, but around these focal points of the front end of trading technology, all are...

Beating the Benchmark: Historically static and delayed, TCA is evolving in pre-trade, real-time directions.(transaction cost analysis )
September 4, 2006... Generically speaking, there's nothing new about transaction cost analysis (TCA). It's fundamental to the trading function, but in its increasingly automated form, with recent advances in computing speed and analytics, the adoption rate is...

Making a Mark on Bonds: Best execution goes fixed-income, complete with standards.
September 4, 2006... It's still at an early stage, but regulators are working with the securities industry to set guidelines for defining more precisely what best execution means in a fixed-income context. Since April, the Bond Market Association (BMA) has been...

Broker-Exchange Battle Goes Global.(New Zealand Exchange)(Australian Stock Exchange)
September 18, 2006... The U.S. pattern of stock-exchange consolidation, which has recently spawned a flurry of new investments by market participants in alternative or smaller trading venues, is repeating itself on two continents. Just as NYSE Group and Nasdaq Stock...

Kx Database at Cantor Makes Real-Time Real.(Kx Systems, Cantor Fitzgerald)
September 18, 2006... High-performance database developer Kx Systems has completed a comprehensive installation at Cantor Fitzgerald, which in turn is providing a rare glimpse into the decisions that are accelerating the race to analyze and trade on market data in...

Merrill and Portware in Strategic Alliance: Will jointly develop institutional trading platform.
September 18, 2006... Merrill Lynch & Co. has entered into a strategic partnership with execution and order management technology company Portware to develop a customized trading platform for institutional clients. In an announcement last week, Merrill said it will...

Firms Bid to Block NSCC Attempt to Ban Compression: Air grievances at SEC.(National Securities Clearing Corp.)(Securities and Exchange Commission)
September 18, 2006... At a meeting with staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission ten days ago, representatives of six broker-dealers forcefully opposed a National Securities Clearing Corp. (NSCC) effort to prohibit trade compression. The firms, which...

Investec Using Fidessa Algo Tools.(Investec Securities)
September 18, 2006... Investec Securities has gone live with two algorithmic trading modules from the Fidessa unit of U.K.-based trade execution vendor royalblue: the Pairs trading tool that enables traders to work on complex pair orders based on merger activity,...

TSE, in Trading Upgrade Step, Nears Vendor Selection.(Tokyo Stock Exchange)
September 18, 2006... The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) finished accepting bids this month to rebuild its troubled trading system and is preparing to select a vendor by year-end. The exchange did not disclose the names of the candidates; full implementation is planned...

SMAs Taking Off.(separately managed accounts)
September 18, 2006... Separately managed accounts (SMAs) have never lived up to their hype as a threat or alternative to the $9 trillion mutual fund industry, but according to Aite Group, their total assets are approaching $800 billion and will nearly double by...

Hedge Fund Influence.
September 18, 2006... A graph in the July 27 Wall Street Journal starkly indicated the impact of hedge funds in trading various financial instruments. They accounted for 89 percent of U.S. trading in convertible bonds, 66 percent in distressed debt, 38 percent in...

Aggregating Aggregators.(ADVFN acquisitions)(SI Holdings Inc.)(InvestorsHub.com)(Brief article)
September 18, 2006... Retail investor portal ADVFN has acquired two U.S. operators of Web sites similar to its own: InvestorsHub.com and SI Holdings (siliconinvestor.com). London-based ADVFN--short for Advanced Financial Network--has 700,000 registered users and...

The Institutional AML Challenge.(anti-money-laundering )
September 18, 2006... Institutional broker-dealers have been required to watch for money-laundering activity ever since the securities industry came under the Bank Secrecy Act. As a result, much of the industry adopted automated anti-money-laundering (AML) solutions...

Compliance: Doing More for Less.
September 18, 2006... Securities firms have typically responded to regulations through a reactive, "comply first" approach. While this helps to meet immediate regulatory deadlines, it has also led to compliance silos, with redundant development efforts, point...

ITG Adds Single-Stock Functionality to DMA System.(Investment Technology Group)(direct-market access )
September 18, 2006... Investment Technology Group (ITG) said it has added single-stock capability to its Triton direct-market access (DMA) product, enabling clients to integrate trading in lists and single stocks--a process that previously had been awkward at best....

Cameron Founder and Chief Marketer Get Orc Posts.(John Cameron)
September 18, 2006... As FIX connectivity vendor Cameron Systems is further integrated into its Swedish acquirer, Orc Software, Cameron's founder, John Cameron, is assuming the role of chief technology officer for the parent company. "John Cameron is replacing...

ADP Offers Finetre System.(Automatic Data Processing)(Finetre Corp)
September 18, 2006... In a boost for heretofore problematic annuity processing systems, Automatic Data Processing has entered into an agreement to provide its broker-dealer customers with the AnnuityNet platform from Herndon, Va.-based Finetre Corp. As recently...

Two JP Morgan Algos Eye Stealth Trading, Dark Liquidity.(Aqua and Arid)
September 18, 2006... JP Morgan Chase & Co. has made a double dive into hidden-liquidity trading with the launch this month of two algorithms--Aqua and Arid--designed to trade anonymously on exchanges and electronic communications networks as well as in "dark"...

News.(EdgeTrade - Execution Management System )
September 18, 2006... New York agency-only brokerage and trading software developer EdgeTrade last week introduced a smart-order execution algorithm that is available to buy- and sell-side firms through EdgeTrade's front-end Execution Management System (EMS) for...

E-mail Archiving: Innovative Technology, Cautious Customers.
September 18, 2006... While e-mail archiving may be a business and technology whose time has come, uncontrolled e-communications are still the rule rather than the exception within the securities industry. That is the message in a just-released study in which 62...

Is XBRL a Solution Searching for a Problem?(extensible business reporting language)
September 18, 2006... Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox, who took office more than a year ago, has been an unabashed promoter of extensible business reporting language (XBRL) as a standard for business data reporting. Yet to date, only 24...

Portfolio Margining Gives Tech-Savvy Firms More Leverage.
September 18, 2006... Regulatory proposals introducing a risk-based approach to calculating margin requirements are expected to free up investors' capital and ramp up their leverage capabilities--but only for customers of the most tech-savvy broker-dealers, at least...

NMS Compliance Requires More Monitoring, Archiving.(National Market System)
September 18, 2006... The Securities and Exchange Commission is requiring full industry compliance with Regulation National Market System (NMS) by next May, and many Wall Street firms are scrambling to install monitoring and archiving technology to meet...

Terrorist Tracking, Five Years On: Controversy over Swift may have been misplaced.
September 25, 2006... Three months ago, the New York Times and other newspapers reported details of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) managed by the U.S. Treasury Department's office of foreign assets control (Ofac) and the Central Intelligence Agency....

SEC's Short-Sale Reforms Supported, Despite Gaps.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
September 25, 2006... The Securities and Exchange Commission's proposal to amend Regulation SHO is likely to reduce the most egregious failures to deliver securities in short-sale transactions but still permit the widespread practice among broker-dealers--the heart...

FinCEN's Werner Eyes E-filing Advantages.
September 25, 2006... Where banks and brokerages feel the burden of meeting post-9-11 anti-money-laundering (AML) mandates, Robert Werner, director of the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), sees an opportunity: to make the...

New Era for ITG; Lehman Takes Stake in an ECN: Gasser leaves Nyfix to succeed Killian.(Investment Technology Group)
September 25, 2006... The suspense over who might succeed Investment Technology Group (ITG) chief executive and founder Raymond Killian lifted last week: Robert Gasser, a trading industry veteran who was most recently CEO of Nyfix, will become president, CEO and a...

New Era for ITG; Lehman Takes Stake in an ECN: After Buy of TAL, A Bet on Bats.
September 25, 2006... Lehman Brothers is not the biggest Wall Street bank, nor has it been as high-profile as, say, Citigroup or Goldman Sachs Group in technology leadership or the movement to invest in and consolidate securities markets and electronic trading...

China Puts Foreign Securities Firms on Hold.(China Securities Regulatory Commission )
September 25, 2006... The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has said that it will issue no new licenses to brokerages set up as joint ventures with foreign firms until the country's market reforms are completed. In a Sept. 13 statement, the agency gave...

CDS Doubling Again.(credit default swaps )(International Swaps & Derivatives Association )
September 25, 2006... The International Swaps & Derivatives Association (ISDA) came out with its latest market survey last week, putting the outstanding notional amount of credit derivatives--single-name credit default swaps (CDS) as well as those on indexes,...

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS.(SuperDerivatives-Bonnie Eshel)(Reuters Group PLC - Michael Peace)(Tabb Group - Andy Nybo )
September 25, 2006... Options valuation and benchmarking firm SuperDerivatives has hired Bonnie Eshel from Reuters Group as head of its market data division. She heads a team responsible for gathering and managing data from multiple sources as well as...

Naked Short-Sale Reform: First Do No Harm.
September 25, 2006... Try as hard as you might to avoid it, if you're involved in securities market operations you've no doubt been exposed to skirmishes in the ongoing guerilla war over alleged illegal naked short selling. This protracted battle is already a modern...

Compliance: Doing More for Less (II).
September 25, 2006... In the first of this two-part series on Sept. 18, we argued that conventional approaches to compliance tend to be inefficient. By design, these approaches are focused on achieving compliance quickly, but they trade off the organization's...

Swedish Technology Veteran Named CEO at Orc: Thomas Bill brings information security and capital markets experience.(Orc Software)
September 25, 2006... Stockholm-based trading technology provider Orc Software, completing a top-management overhaul, has appointed Thomas Bill as CEO, effective Oct. 1. Since 2002, Bill was CEO of Protect Data, a leading Swedish technology company that specializes...

OMX Adding Iceland; Norway Only Holdout in Region.(OMX Group acquisition of Icelandic Securities Depository Ltd. and Iceland Stock Exchange)
September 25, 2006... OMX Group, the Stockholm-based securities exchange operator and technology company, said it has signed a letter of intent to acquire the Iceland Stock Exchange (ICEX) and Icelandic Securities Depository from their parent, Eignarhaldsfelagid...

Knowing Your (Politically Exposed) Customer.
September 25, 2006... The best way for firms to avoid association with financial crimes is to steer clear of risky customers. But that's easier said than done. Such customers can appear as individuals rather than companies and can come from any walk of life, from...

FutureTrade Teams With LaBranche.(LaBranche Financial Services)
September 25, 2006... FutureTrade said that through a partnership with LaBranche Financial Services, it will make its trading platform available to the stock-market specialist firm's institutional clients. LaBranche's institutional execution group will market the...

Cicada Creates AML-MiFID Compliance Unit.(anti-money-laundering - Financial Instruments Directive)(formation of a Subsidiary)
September 25, 2006... Data management software company Cicada has formed a subsidiary, Profiler Solutions, to market a new product for assisting compliance with know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering (AML) regulations as well as Europe's Markets in...