This Week: Bloomberg, Ice, DTCC, & More

Katana launches on Bloomberg App Portal

Katana, a pre-trade analytics tool that identifies relative value opportunities for bond market dealers and asset managers, is live on the Bloomberg App Portal at APPS KTNA.

Bloomberg Terminal subscribers can use the Katana app to identify relative value opportunities generated by Katana’s proprietary machine-learning models. Instead of comparing one bond against an index or a limited number of bonds, Katana screens more than 200 million bond pairs to uncover spread difference anomalies.

Ice Expands ESG Reference Data Service

Intercontinental Exchange (Ice) has expanded its environmental, social and governance (ESG) reference data platform to include data that enables actionable comparisons across companies and sectors. The company also shared a selection of findings from across each of the three categories.

Ice’s ESG reference data service now includes coverage of companies in key indices, including the Ice US 1000 Index, which measures the performance of the top 1,000 US listed companies. Ice’s research team is continuing to expand this service and plans to launch coverage for additional companies and geographies later this year.

Bank of America Global Research is using Ice’s company-specific data for ESG-related attributes in building out its proprietary ESGMeter, which provides a score of a company’s likelihood of experiencing stronger financial stability over the next three years, based on quantitative and fundamental inputs. For each company in BofA Global Research’s coverage universe, more than 140 ESG-related attributes are considered.

Recently released findings from Ice’s ESG database include: 48% of US large-cap companies report their carbon emissions; 76% of companies that are part of the Ice US 1000 Index provide wellness programs to their employees, while 58% of the companies offer stock purchase plans to employees; and the average age of board members for Ice US 1000 Index companies is 62, while their average tenure on the board is eight years.

Estimize and ExtractAlpha merge

Hong Kong-based alternative data vendor ExtractAlpha and New York-based earnings estimates database provider Estimize are merging. Vinesh Jha, founder and CEO of ExtractAlpha, will be taking the reins of the combined organization, while Leigh Drogen, Estimize founder, has begun transitioning away from running day-to-day company operations.

Prior to founding ExtractAlpha in 2013, Jha was the director of quantitative research at StarMine, a proprietary quantitative trader at Merrill Lynch, and executive director at Morgan Stanley’s internal systematic hedge fund, PDT. Jha had also been an adviser to Estimize since its early days, helping the firm, founded in 2011, start up a quantitative research discipline and build out the data sales business among systematic quantitative funds.

DTCC approved to provide security-based swap data reporting services in the US

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC) announced that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the DTCC Data Repository (US) LLC (DDR) application to operate as a registered security-based swap data repository (SBSDR). 

DDR, part of DTCC’s Global Trade Repository service, will function as a registered SBSDR for transactions in the equity, credit, and interest rate derivatives asset classes, reporting transactions directly to the SEC.

DTCC officials say this is a key step in completing the implementation of US derivatives oversight set out in Title VII of the Dodd–Frank Act, which divided the regulatory oversight of derivatives between the SEC for security-based swaps and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for all other swaps.

TNS adopts Brazil B3 into growing global portfolio

Transaction Network Services (TNS), now offers traders access to market data at Brazilian exchange B3. This new offering is the first Latin American exchange connection for TNS, which has access to many of the world’s major exchanges delivered over its low-latency network.

B3, headquartered in São Paulo, is the largest futures market in Latin America. TNS is one of a handful of market data vendors registered with the exchange. TNS now has connections to B3 to deliver market data and order routing access to all B3 markets.

Morrison Securities turns to Eventus Systems for trade surveillance

Eventus Systems, a provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance and market risk solutions, announced that Sydney-based brokerage firm Morrison Securities will deploy its Validus platform for trade surveillance in equities, equity options, and warrants. Morrison is the top broker in the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) equity derivatives market by volume and value, and a major provider of execution and clearing services to Australia Financial Services License holders.

This is the first Australia-based client for US-based Eventus, which has been aiming to grow its presence within the Asia-Pacific region.

Morrison will go live on Validus in July for trade surveillance of the firm’s activity on the ASX, Chi-X Australia, and the National Stock Exchange of Australia. The brokerage will deploy the cloud-based version of Validus, hosted in real time.

Investics to provide Arabesque S-Ray ESG portfolio analytics

Investics Data Services Company, a Boston-based consultancy and data and analytics provider, has reached an agreement with Arabesque S-Ray to provide a suite of Arabesque S-Ray ESG data through the Investics Cloud Ecosystem (Ice) and Investics Darts data marketplace.

Clients can subscribe to one or more of the various Investics Darts Arabesque S-Ray ESG datasets on AWS Marketplace and automatically integrate the S-Ray ESG data with their own portfolio holdings and investment data on Investics Ice for further performance, risk and exposure analysis.

Currently covering over 8,000 listed corporations, the machine-learning technology of Arabesque S-Ray combines more than 250 ESG metrics with news signals from over 30,000 sources to drive key sustainability insights for its clients. It is the first ESG data provider of its kind to rate companies on the normative principles of the United Nations Global Compact.

S-Ray also provides an industry-specific assessment of companies’ performance on material ESG issues together with an assessment of how companies report their emissions. These scores are combined with a preferences filter that also assesses a company’s business involvements.