Vol 5 No 1
BRIEF OBJECTS
BRIEF OBJECTS
CORRECTION: Trading Technology Week recently reported that Thomson Financial's Autex Fixed Income platform's base messages include the buy or sell request and size of the subject offering but not the name of the seller, price and comments (TTW, Oct. 15). In fact, subject offerings will have the name of the person who sent the offering, as well as prices and comments.
Cantor Closes Offices
Cantor Fitzgerald, devastated by the Sept. 11 attacks, is to end its operations in Paris and Frankfurt. The firm has offered staff at the offices--20 in Paris and 28 in Frankfurt--trading and back-office roles in London, although these figures include around ten Espeed staff in the same locations, who will remain there in support and sales roles. The London office, based in Tower Hill, houses Cantor's UK data center and 750 Cantor and Espeed employees. Cantor's Milan office will be unaffected. A spokesperson says the aim was to cut costs and that the decision was possible because the firm already has desks in London for all the products traded from Paris and Frankfurt.
GS Links to Cognotec Routing Network
Goldman Sachs has linked its proprietary electronic foreign exchange system, WebET, to Cognotec's Liquidity Linq service for electronic FX trading. The service, which electronically routes price requests between banks hooked up to it, enables Goldman to market foreign exchange to other users of Cognotec dealing services. Goldman said it would focus particularly on banks that intend to extend the number of currencies or the range of the trading hours they offer to their clients.
Fxall: Investments From Standard Chartered, RBS
Fxall, the multi-bank electronic foreign exchange portal, has obtained new investments from Standard Chartered, which has become a new equity partner, and the Royal Bank of Scotland, which has added to its previous investment. This brings the number of equity investors in the platform to 16, following recent equity investments from Credit Agricole Indosuez and BNP Paribas earlier in the month. In another development, Fxall has selected Radianz to provide IP access for its online FX trading via Radianz' global financial extranet, Radianznet.
Deutsche Puts On Socx
Socx (Settlement and Operations Clearing Exchange), an operations outsourcing system for investment banks and financial institutions, has announced a successful launch and its first client (albeit one of the partners behind it), Deutsche Bank. The other partner is Wall Street Systems. Socx is based on Wall Street Systems' settlement and trade processing system, which has been integrated with workflow and customer relationship management tools from IT firm Staffware, providing web-based trade monitoring and reporting. Socx covers trade validation, confirmation matching, exception handling and escalation, corporate actions and delivery to general ledger for money markets, foreign exchange, fixed income and vanilla derivatives. Socx claims to provide enhanced service and significant cost reductions, based on a per-trade charge, over in-house operations.
FpML Reports Progress in New Products
FpML.org says that working groups set up to adapt the standard for foreign exchange and equity derivatives are making substantial progress, and they should issue working drafts by the end of the year. FX products include spot, forward, swaps, vanilla, barrier, average rate and digital options and trade strategies. Equity products include single stock, basket, indices and convertible bond equity swaps, plus US, European, Asian and barrier options (single stock, basket, indices and contracts for difference).
ADP/OMR Gets First Asian ASP Client
Global Netrade Securities Co., a Tokyo-based brokerage firm, has signed a multi-year agreement with ADP/OMR, a division of ADP Brokerage Services Group, to use ADP/OMR's ASP model for its transaction processing. The application, Trade Thru, is a multi-product, multi-entity, multi-currency trade processing solution for straight through processing. It is available as a license or outsourcing solution. Global Netrade Securities went live in September with Trade Thru to process derivatives trading activities for exchange options and futures.
Atriax, RCP Work on Treasury Adapter
Multi-bank online foreign exchange portal Atriax is working with RCP Consultants to establish connectivity between the portal and proprietary treasury and portfolio management systems for straight through processing. The tool, Atriax Adapt, uses an electronic adapter and will enable Atriax members to connect to the dealing engine without further software development.
Avistar, Syntegra Link Voice, Video Technologies
Avistar Communications, a specialist in enterprise video communication technology, and Syntegra have partnered to market their products jointly. The deal integrates the sale of Syntegra's ITS voice trading platform with Avistar's AvistarVOS, a video operating system. AvistarVOS enables users to make multi-party video calls, use video-on-demand and utilize record and publish services from a desktop. Syntegra will sell ITS turrets complemented by AvistarVOS to its customers globally.
Financial Objects Boosts Messaging
Financial Objects has increased the messaging capabilities of its Activebank suite of Internet-enabled banking solutions. The messaging system is XML-based and automates authorization, repair and release procedures for improved straight through processing. It also facilitates back-office integration and transmission of Swift-standard messages.
Bank of New York Unveils NEw Messaging Service
The Bank of New York has inaugurated post-trade messaging for users of iFX Manager, the bank's order management system and trading platform for foreign exchange. Clients will have the ability to generate two types of electronic post-trade messages for custodians, accountants and counterparties. The service uses the Swift network as well as the system's own fax and e-mail capabilities to inform message recipients. The bank claims its messaging will increase the rates of straight through processing for FX.
New Order Interfaces Issue From Datek
Datek Online Financial Services has introduced a new order-entry interface, the Order Equity window, which "floats" on desktops, allowing investors to enter equity trade orders without toggling between different browser windows, drop-downs, or having to use a mouse. The result is that orders can be entered more quickly. Datek has also developed an Order Bank window that enables customers to prepare several orders and send them to the market at the appropriate time with a single click.
CLS Adds Scandinavian Currencies to System
CLS Bank is to add the Swedish krona, the Danish kroner and the Norwegian krone to its global settlement system, the bank announced last week. Settlement in the three Scandinavian currencies will not be available when CLS is launched in first half 2002, the firm said, but they will be added within a year of the live date. In a joint statement, the three Scandinavian central banks--the Danmarks Nationalbank, the Norges Bank and the Sveriges Riksbank--said that they will all hold accounts for CLS Bank, linking it to the national Real Time Gross Settlement systems. With the addition of the Scandinavian currencies to the seven existing "CLS-eligible" currencies--Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, euro, Japanese yen, sterling, Swiss franc and US dollar--CLS Bank will offer settlement facilities for more than 82 percent of all global foreign exchange trades, CLS says.
Cygnifi Signals Trouble
Cygnifi Derivatives Services is selling off its intellectual property, mainly consisting of derivatives pricing, portfolio valuation and collateral-credit management software. Cygnifi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on Oct. 4. The JP Morgan offshoot had developed and will be selling, among others, the Kapital Risk Management System, a portfolio risk management application; Aladdin, a spreadsheet-based currency-pricing tool; and Sampras, a counterparty credit-exposure monitoring system. Cygnifi has indicated it will seek buyers for its assets and will consider merger and acquisition partners.
Bids Are In for Comdisco
Comdisco agreed to sell its disaster-recovery business to Sungard Data Systems for $825 million as part of a bankruptcy-court action. The sale is subject to the approval of a judge at the US Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, a decision that is expected following an Oct. 23 hearing. The bid replaces an earlier $775 million bid from Sungard and exceeds Hewlett-Packard's original bid of $610 million. About 50 percent of Comdisco's clientele is in financial services, and Sungard is by far the market leader in business continuity for the sector.
Hewlett-Packard released a statement on the bid related to an ongoing Department of Justice investigation of the acquisition in which it states its objection to the choice of Sungard and that "it expects to be confirmed the successful bidder given the anticompetitive nature of Sungard's proposed acquisition."
Fimat Selects Radianz Extranet for Hosting
Radianz has been selected to provide the Fimat Group, a subsidiary of Societe Generale, hosting services for its users with its IP-based global financial extranet, Radianznet. In a two-year contract, Radianz will provide Fimat and its customers with TIB data distribution services and TIB-based application hosting for Fimat's market data feed handlers, helping Fimat implement its electronic trading solutions. Radianz will host Fimat's data distribution infrastructure within Radianz' New York and Geneva hosting facilities.
