Treasury and capital markets software specialist Calypso Technology has developed “an industrialised blueprint for reducing complexity and cost in banks”. The Calypso Bank-in-a-Box was developed in collaboration with a group of global banks to consolidate and document their processes and systems in the face of market and regulatory changes.
MCO Europe, exclusive distributor of the McObject high performance database financial markets in the UK and Europe, is raising investment through Crowdcube, the UK’s largest crowdfunding site, to fund growth and expansion. McObject’s eXtremeDB Financial Edition high-performance database is used for trading and risk management by banks, fund managers, brokers and data vendors.
Deutsche Börse plans a joint venture with the Shanghai Stock Exchange and China Financial Futures Exchange to develop and market Chinese-based financial instruments to investors outside mainland China.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority’s study into competition in investment and corporate banking will focus on choice, transparency, bundling and cross-subsidisation in debt and equity capital markets, mergers and acquisitions and acquisition financing. It will also consider links between competition in these primary market services and related activities such as corporate lending and broking, and ancillary services.
Three-quarters of market participants use the FIX protocol for confirmation and affirmation of their transactions, according to a new survey released by financial industry standards body the FIX Trading Community.
A decade ago, one of the driving factors behind outsourcing was reducing cost and headcount. However, with the growing regulatory and compliance burden, firms are increasingly becoming more cautious about outsourcing.
ABN Amro plans to implement the Temenos WealthSuite integrated wealth management platform for its international private banking business. It will also be able to extend the use of the T24 core system to its private banking and diamond & jewellery business, giving it one platform with one operating model across multiple business lines.
With the recent pension reforms opening up a plethora of investment options, financial services providers need to capitalise on the opportunity to create a value-led digital customer proposition
Boat Services, the OTC trade reporting service provider owned by technology vendor Cinnober, plans to introduce a MiFID II compliance solution, offering publication services for all instrument classes. It will apply for authorisation by the FCA in the UK when Approved Publication Arrangement registration is available in 2016.
IG Group has launched a trading app for the Apple Watch, which it says is one of the first of its kind. The Apple Watch is due to be released on 24 April.
Russian investment banking firm BCS Financial Group says using IBM Commerce to create and manage personalised marketing campaigns has increased cross sales of its online trading, brokerage, and investment strategy consulting services have increased by 20% in six months.
Long-term investors are deeply concerned about their ability to find liquidity, with nearly 90% afraid that predatory high-frequency traders are preying on their flows, according to a new survey by block-trading network Liquidnet.
The UK should lead the development of an EU Capital Markets Union because of its better-established markets, according to a report from a House of Lords committee published today.
Financial market regulations across the globe are increasingly focusing on risk management. This includes ensuring it is clear who firms are trading with and for, and confirming that firms can identify the instruments being traded. As a result, the field of reference data is increasingly held under the regulatory microscope and that lens extends to the standards used to identify financial instruments, writes Chris Pickles.
A new US bond trading venue with a mission to help electronify fixed income markets for investors using experience gained in the equity markets is preparing to launch in the US this quarter. Called OpenBondX, the venue was Created by former Lime Brokerage chief executive Alistair Brown and former colleagues, OpenBondX is an ‘all to all’ system open to the buy-side and the sell-side.
Deutsche Börse, Eurex and the Bombay Stock Exchange have further extended their strategic cooperation offering connectivity services. Participants of BSE will be able to use Deutsche Börse’s resilient low latency N7 network services to connect to BSE back-ends in India through the Deutsche Börse access points in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Temenos has moved into the fund administration business with a €235 million acquisition of Luxembourg-based Multifonds, which counts a number of Tier 1 institutions as users of its fund administration platform.
Fixed income markets have historically been a bastion of high-touch trading, with manual processes, large tickets and little standardisation. But as recent years have seen inventory slashed and balance sheets cut in face of rising regulatory pressure, finding liquidity has become more of a challenge. A group of banks are hoping to reinvigorate the market though a standardised messaging system.
Fenergo has enhanced its Regulatory Rules Engine software, used by investment banks investment banks and capital market firms for client lifecycle. The software enables financial institutions to comply with a range of regulatory frameworks based on a single, out-of-the-box repository of rules.
In the Oscar-winning film The Theory of Everything the lead character Stephen Hawking lays out his vision of a single equation that explains all physical aspects of the universe. This rarefied scientific debate has echoes in the more prosaic world of Transaction Cost Analysis in financial markets, where the availability of more granular data coupled with pressure from regulators is driving a whole new wave of research and analysis, says ITG’s Michael Sparkes.
Continuing its policy of offering products that fit across user workflows, Bloomberg has moved in to the transaction reporting space in Europe. The company’s Trade Order Management System has been granted approval by the Financial Conduct Authority to report securities with an ISIN and OTC derivatives as part of the UK’s Approved Reporting Mechanisms regime.
The Financial Conduct Authority plans to conduct a market study of the investment and corporate banking sector to decide if competition in the sector is working properly. It may also look into the asset management later in the year.
Capital markets firms are losing their intellectual property too easily to competitors, business partners and third parties. Most companies could benefit from a tougher approach to IP, including licencing agreements and more use of patents, according to a new report by analyst firm Aite.
The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures at the end of last year highlighted something that IT and security people in financial services have known for some time – the modern networked environment is far less secure than most people are prepared to admit …
Avox, the DTCC’s legal entity reference data subsidiary, has launched a series of web-based application programming interfaces designed to support faster access to data, including legal entity identifiers, legal names, addresses, industry classifications and corporate hierarchies.
From the early days of internet distribution, New York-based Alacra has been aggregating reference data. Chief executive Steve Goldstein told David Bannister the company’s story
SmartStream Technologies has acquired the assets of IBM’s Algorithmics Collateral solution and will add it to its existing solutions for the automation of the end-to-end post trade lifecycle, rebranding it as TLM Collateral Management. The system provides collateral lifecycle automation for buy- and sell-side institutions, custodians and asset servicers, large and small.
US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo has condemned the CFTC’s implementation of swaps trading regulation reforms, describing its approach as highly over-engineered, disproportionately modelled on the US futures market and biased against both human discretion and technological innovation.
Brazil’s capital markets IT spend is expected to reach $2.6 billion by 2017 as the country seeks to modernise its financial institutions, improve post-trade processing and integrate with global markets. The transformation creates both challenges and opportunities for foreign financial services companies in Latin America’s largest market, according to a new report by analyst firm Celent.
SIX Swiss Exchange is to launch a new trading platform for corporate bonds, which it says will provide a better way of trading large blocks of less liquid issues. The new platform is due to launch in the first half of 2015.
Jan Verplancke is stepping down as chief information officer and group head of technology and operations at Standard Chartered, as is Richard Goulding, chief risk officer. The news of their departure comes as the banks announced further restructuring, including the closure of its institutional cash equities, equity research and equity capital markets businesses as part of a strategic plan to ditch “non-core or underperforming businesses”.
When first reports of an integrated communications project that had attracted a $66 million investment from a consortium of banks led by Goldman Sachs appeared last year, there was an element of cloak and dagger about the enterprise. The truth is both more prosaic and more interesting according to David Gurle, chief executive and founder of the company behind it.
Spain’s BME is poised to open a new trading route from London to Madrid, which it says will increase the speed of access to the Spanish stock market for investors in London.
ICAP is combining its EBS foreign exchange and BrokerTec fixed income electronic trading platforms into one business unit. The change is“an internal management reorganisation” and the platforms will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
Despite tensions between Russia and NATO over the situation in east Ukraine, the underlying internationalisation and reform agenda in Moscow has not changed, according to Russian broker BCS.
India’s Bombay Stock Exchange has ramped up its network application and monitoring speeds and opened a new investor service centre in New Delhi, as it seeks to attract latency-sensitive traders.
The securities industry is suffering from “innovatism”, a serious disease that if untreated could result in significant damage by detracting attention away from genuine business growth. At the same time, commercial pressures could force radical change in several areas of the capital markets, according to panellists at a debate hosted by Mondo Visione this week.
The regulatory spotlight is shining on high frequency traders and dark pools, but the technological changes that have driven down trading costs for everyone will not be reversed. With market making increasingly the preserve of profit maximising algorithmic traders, there is a growing responsibility on institutions to control where their trades are going and how they are being executed. Those that do not are writing checks to HFTs with clients’ money
The European Commission has introduced new rules designed to encourage investment and trigger liquidity – including the use of “high quality” securitisation. The move has been welcomed cautiously by experts, despite the controversial role of securitisation in the financial crisis.
Societe Generale Securities Services (SGSS) has launched Global Broker-Dealer Services, an outsourcing solution aimed at institutional brokers, mid-tier banks and broker dealers. The fully integrated global service includes middle-office services, back-office processing and post-trade services.
