News briefs

ADP Securities Industry Software (ADP/SIS), a division of Automatic Data Processing's (ADP's) Brokerage Services Group, has added two new clients – HC Denison Company and CNBS – to the firm's securities transaction processing operation. Both firms now use the ADP/SIS real-time STP Brokerage Accounting System (BAS). They have also agreed to use Posse, ADP/SIS's order management system (OMS), its browser-based broker desktop application, and Olos, the vendor's fixed-income trading system. The Brokerage Accounting System is an online real-time system that automates brokerage accounting and back-office functions, using parameters to customise features to a firm's business requirements. Posse allows firms to receive, enter, route and execute orders, which are automatically booked in real-time to the back office. It also provides sales executives with real-time access to client and product information, portfolio charts and reports, real-time tax lot accounting, sales and commission calculation tools, and order entry for all types of securities. Olos provides firms with a real-time inventory management and marketing tools for fixed-income securities.

HBOS, one of the largest mortgage and savings providers in the UK, has signed with DSTi for the vendor's HiPortfolio/3, HiWay and HiMarketData applications for use across all of its insurance companies within the HBOS Group. The solution will re-engineer what DSTi describes as HBOS's "end-to-end" fund accounting and reporting processes, providing a consistent and reconciled source of data for management and financial accounting, regulatory and tax reporting.

"We chose HiPortfolio/3, HiWay and HiMarketData because we believe it will minimise risk and operational costs," says David Morgan, HBOS's business manager of asset management projects. "We will consolidate our IT infrastructure from multiple systems into HiPortfolio/3. It will address the accounting and reporting requirements of all of our investment savings products and HiWay will help us link the solution to other companies within the group, while HiMarketData will validate and verify external price data before it reaches HiPortfolio/3."

Paris-based Linedata Services, a provider of investment management technology including its flagship LongView Trading system, has announced its Liquidity Alliance Programme designed to provide users with access to liquidity pools across all assets types. The programme allows Linedata to bring multiple trading and liquidity destinations to the LongView Trading desktop, by partnering with execution venues around the globe. In addition to connecting to any Fix-enabled provider, Linedata has established relationships with information and execution destinations through the Liquidity Alliance Programme. Existing alliances include destinations such as TradeWeb, Liquidnet, FXall, FX Connect, Instinet, Harborside +, Thomson Autex, Banc of America Securities and Sonic Financial Technologies (BNY Brokerage).

Mark-it Partners, the UK-based provider of integrated credit pricing information, is to acquire Totem Market Valuations, a provider of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives consensus valuations. The combination of these businesses will provide the OTC market with valuations, pricing and analysis across a range of markets, enabling participants to meet regulatory and accounting requirements.

Mark-it's acquisition of Totem will enable the group to offer its combined client base of more than 160 corporate and financial institutions, data on markets in Europe, Asia and North America. On completion of the acquisition, Tim Barker, chief executive of Totem, will join Mark-it Partners' management team as executive vice-president.

Egar Technology, the New York-based provider of trading and risk management systems, has joined Intel's 'Easy Access Programme', an Intel-sponsored programme for the support of software developers. The agreement paves the way for Egar's inclusion of Inteltechnology to a range of Egar's software products.

This year Egar has engineered its Egar Focus suite to run on systems with 64-bit Intel Itanium 2 central processing units. Egar Focus supports global trading and financial risk management, designed for the automation of front, middle and back offices in banks and investment companies. The main task under this programme is to reach the maximum performance while working with large databases and processing transactions in real-time.

McDonnell Investment Management, an Oak Brook, Illinois-based investment manager with more than $7 billion in assets under management, has gone live with Eagle Star, Eagle Investment Systems' web-based, global investment accounting solution. McDonnell has deployed Eagle Star as its core accounting and record-keeping system to support multiple fixed-income investment styles for institutional and private clients. Eagle's Professional Services assisted McDonnell with the implementation, which was completed in less than four months. McDonnell selected Eagle Star to replace its existing legacy accounting system. Eagle's web-based technology and ability to handle high volumes of transactions were key factors in McDonnell's selection. The platform will enable McDonnell to provide Schedule D statutory reporting on behalf of its insurance clients in the future.

Duff & Phelps Investment Management, a Chicago-based investment management firm, has chosen Linedata Services' LongView Trading System to provide the firm with automated portfolio modelling, electronic trading, and compliance monitoring. The system will be implemented before Q3 this year. The LongView Trading System, Linedata Services' flagship product, is a global, multi-asset class order management system that has been developed to support the needs of portfolio managers, traders, compliance officers and operations personnel.

Patsystems, a London-based independent software vendor (ISV) and provider of trading front ends, has selected the GigaSpaces Grid infrastructure as the server component in TradeMark, the vendor's updated trading platform. New York-based GigaSpaces provides grid-based infrastructure for real-time business applications. GigaSpaces' grid transaction server is now deployed in the TradeMark product, which will be generally available in the second half of this year.

Daiwa SB Investments (UK), the UK subsidiary of the Japanese Daiwa SB Investments Group with approximately £5 billion in assets under management, has selected DST International's HiPortfolio/3 and HiCompliance applications for its investment management operations. According to DSTi, the platform will re-engineer its 'end-to-end' fund management and reporting processes, providing a consistent and reconciled source of data for fund managers and financial accounting, regulatory and tax reporting.

"The new look and feel of HiPortfolio/3 makes it a great deal faster to navigate around, and going forward, the point-in-time recovery capabilities is an excellent risk mitigator," says Eiji Fukumuro, Daiwa SBI's company secretary/compliance officer. "HiPortfolio/3 has outstanding reporting capabilities and because it is integrated with Crystal Reports, this adds enormous flexibility and will mean that our marketing team can directly benefit from the advanced presentation quality."

Wall Street Systems, a provider of global treasury and capital markets solutions, has launched Release 4.1 of its Wall Street System treasury and capital markets platform. Release 4.1 incorporates functional developments for front-office sales and trading activities, new risk management capabilities and enhancements to its back-office functionality. It also incorporates a number of new technology enhancements focused on performance, controls, ease-of-use and disaster recovery.

PFPC, the Wilmington, Del.-based member of the PNC Financial Services Group, has unveiled the next version of its investor services data repository and analytics suite. The data repository provides clients with self-service access to information that can be used for analysis and decision-making purposes. This data repository enables clients to isolate and integrate data from both internal and external data sources, through a single reporting system. All information is housed on a secure PFPC server. Reportable data can be collected and aggregated from a multitude of sources, such as transfer agent, sub-accounting, brokerage and other third-party systems. Data can then be merged to run compliance-based reports or cultivated to create targeted marketing campaigns.

Henderson Global Investors, the London-based global investment management company, has signed with Comit Gruppe, for the vendor's Sword risk management software. Henderson will be the first organisation to use the recently released version 4 of the Sword system, which includes upgrades to both the risk assessment and reporting functionality. Sword assists buy-side firms comply with Turnbull, Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II directives.

Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corporation has acquired Raw Communications, a London-based provider of webcasting services. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. Raw Communications serves approximately half of the FTSE 100 companies, which use webcasting for their investor relations (IR) communications, and is one of the leading providers of IR Webcasting services in France, Italy and the Nordic region. The company's webcasting services for sell-side institutions help facilitate greater communication with their buy-side clients.

Edgar Online, the South Norwalk, Conn-based financial information company is now offering US public company financial statements in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format. This allows analysts the ability to download a limited number of real-time public company financial statements directly into Microsoft Excel 2003 worksheets. Edgar has been instrumental in the development of XBRL through its early involvement with XBRL International, a consortium made up of 200 organisations including the big four accounting firms, Morgan Stanley and Microsoft. XBRL is an open specification that uses XML-based data tags to describe financial statements in both public and private companies.

Toronto-based Lionhart, an independent investment advisory company specialising in equity-linked, market-neutral global arbitrage strategies, has selected the Monis Convertibles XL analytics libraries with the credit module for credit default swap and asset swap analysis. Lionhart traders and risk managers in Toronto, New York and London will use the application to support the trading and risk management of their convertible arbitrage strategies. Monis Convertibles XL will support Lionhart's analysis for identifying arbitrage opportunities and to manage its risk exposure. In addition to Lionhart, the Standard Bank Group, Société Générale and Wake Asset Management have recently elected to use Monis in support of their convertible bond strategies. Monis Convertibles XL now includes equity and equity options, interest-rate futures and swaps, credit default swaps and asset swaps. Monis is a subsidiary of SunGard Trading and Risk Systems, an operating unit of SunGard.

The Thomson Corporation has finally ended market speculation about its possible acquisition of TradeWeb, a multi-dealer, fixed-income trading platform, by announcing that it has acquired TradeWeb. Thomson purchased TradeWeb for $385 million in cash plus contingent payments of up to approximately $150 million over the next three years based on the achievement of growth targets. The acquisition will play an important role in Thomson's fixed-income strategy over the next few years.

Charles River Development, the Burlington, MA-based provider of financial software and consulting services to the global investment management community, has signed a strategic agreement with Cameron Systems to ship the Cameron Fix engine as an integrated component of the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS). The addition of the Cameron Fix engine to Charles River IMS enables users to send and receive Fix-based equity, fixed income, futures, options, foreign exchange and other trade messages directly from Charles River IMS. Charles River will ship the Cameron Fix engine as a component of Charles River IMS v8.0 at no additional cost to clients in the fourth quarter of this year. Current Charles River clients can upgrade to the Cameron Fix engine through a software upgrade to Charles River IMS v8.0. (For more information of Cameron Systems turn to the interview on page 27).

Mizuho International, the London-based securities and investment banking arm of the Mizuho Financial Group, has selected XSP from XcitekSolutionsPlus, a London-based provider of corporate actions automation technology, to automate its corporate actions processing. "We evaluated several corporate actions system providers in the marketplace and chose XcitekSolutionsPlus because they have a proven solution with several live sites at global locations," says John Sweeney, executive director of securities services at Mizuho International.

Aspect Capital, one of Europe's largest hedge funds with $3.5bn in assets under management, has selected the SmartPatch intelligent infrastructure management system from communications specialist, Brand-Rex, to manage the newly upgraded network within Aspect Capital's London headquarters.

The contract will provide Aspect Capital with risk monitoring and response services for its network-critical trading operation. The Brand-Rex SmartPatch intelligent infrastructure manage-ment system will help ensure that Aspect Capital's 3,500-port network infrastructure maintains 100% service availability with no interruptions to core client business. SmartPatch comprises a suite of patch panels, patch cords, scanners and SQL web-based software designed to enhance network physical-layer control from any local, remote or web connection.

Commerzbank Securities, the integrated investment banking division of Commerzbank AG, has licenced the Principia System from New Jersey-based Principia Partners to manage its London-based asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities (ABS and MBS) portfolio. Commerzbank Securities will use Principia's trade capture, portfolio management and risk management functionality for its growing global ABS/MBS portfolio. "The size and complexity of our ABS business has developed such that we require a fully integrated approach to portfolio and risk management," says Steve Burns, debt capital markets, Commerzbank Securities, London. "Principia not only provides the required ABS analytical and risk management capabilities, but its ease of implementation and maintenance was the key factor in product selection."

Ubitrade, a Paris-based provider of finance industry software, has enhanced its data flow offer, marketed under the name of Ubitrade Data Services (UDS), which combines a settlement data service and a contract data service.

UDS includes:

• UDS/SD (settlement data) automatically downloads clearing data for more than 50 futures and/or options markets

• UDS/CD (contract data) automatically creates any new contract in Ubix' referential (Ubix is Ubitrade's derivative clearing and settlement system), on a daily basis. UDS/CD includes all contract-related information, including maturity rules.