This Week: BNY Mellon/Milestone Group, IHS Markit, Broadridge/China Renaissance, and more

BNY Mellon acquires Milestone Group

Bank of New York Mellon has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Milestone Group, a provider of fund management technology. The deal comes just over a year after the two companies formed an alliance to create a suite of oversight and contingent net asset value services for asset managers and asset owners seeking independent oversight and backup NAV capabilities.

By acquiring Milestone, BNY Mellon will advance the digitization and automation of core accounting and asset services, aim to deliver increased accuracy and timeliness. It also will expand BNY Mellon’s digital offerings and core capabilities, adding OCIO services, cash allocation, and fair value control solutions to the existing suite of NAV solutions.

IHS Markit launches data dictionary to complement EDM

IHS Markit has launched a standalone data dictionary to empower business users with greater visibility of their data. The data dictionary, which is being delivered as a Software-as-a-Service solution, complements the IHS Markit enterprise data management platform, which is used by organizations of different types and sizes in the financial services, energy, and maritime industries.

The data dictionary uses metadata that already exists in its Enterprise Data Management platform, ensuring a quick deployment for existing clients. A business glossary mapping feature will support the onboarding of data sources from systems outside EDM, creating a view of the entire data estate across the organization. Out-of-the-box, customizable fields and definitions will also be made available to expedite time to market.

The SaaS-based deployment model of the data dictionary will aim to deliver benefits including reduced total cost of ownership, streamlined upgrade process, increased business empowerment and scalability. The data dictionary is built on the Amazon Web Services cloud.

Broadridge and China Renaissance expand relationship 

China Renaissance has expanded its post-trade processing relationship with Broadridge Financial Solutions, via Stock Connect, to facilitate the clearing and settlement of both Shenzhen- and Shanghai-listed equities. This expansion is in addition to the Hong Kong-listed equities-processing Broadridge has provided to China Renaissance since 2016.  As part of the growing relationship, both firms are jointly planning for upcoming market and regulatory changes, such as Hong Kong Exchange’s Synapse program and Fast Interface for New Issuance proposal, which aims to replace the existing T+5 process with T+1 for newly listed shares on HKEX. 

Erik Penser Bank using Macrobond to help wealth management team

Erik Penser Bank, Sweden’s leading private bank, is using Macrobond, a provider of global economic, aggregate financial, and sector data, to help its wealth management team make investment decisions quickly and transparently amid rapidly changing market conditions.

Macrobond, founded in Malmö in 2008, delivers macroeconomic, aggregate financial, and sector time-series data to more than 4,000 economists, analysts, portfolio managers, quants, and strategists worldwide, alongside integrated tools that enable them to quickly find, analyze, and visualize the data.

Macrobond opened an office in Stockholm earlier this year to better serve its 200 customers across the Nordics, including banks, asset managers, government institutions, non-profit organizations and universities, among which half are based in Sweden.

TORA integrating Glimpse Markets buy-side data tool into multi-asset platform

Tora, a provider of cloud-based order and execution management system, has announced they are integrating the Glimpse Markets buy-side data sharing tool for fixed income into their multi-asset platform.

Tora users will now be able to view Glimpse’s aggregated buy-side execution data inside Tora’s order execution management system (OEMS) at point of trade. Clients can also opt in to contribute their trading data from Tora’s OEMS to Glimpse which will enable them to receive a data dividend for the information that they contribute, based on the number of trades and total volume.

Glimpse Markets is a data sharing platform that provides the buy side with a post-trade data-sharing service for bond investors. Clients see all of the aggregated and anonymized data from everyone in the network on a T+1 basis.

Avelacom to deploy FPGA-enabled devices across network

Avelacom, a low-latency IT infrastructure and data solutions provider, is partnering with LDA Technologies, a vendor of ultra-low latency FPGA products, to deploy FPGA-enabled devices across its network, further reducing latency and enabling high frequency, algorithmic trading firms to improve performance.

The latest generation of LDA’s FPGA-enabled network devices reduce latency by performing extensive packet validation and switching in fewer than 50 nanoseconds, three times faster than conventional switches, while also improving the network efficiency with innovative bandwidth management algorithms. Pilot devices are deployed on its key ultra-low latency wireless links.

Avelacom will extend the usage of these new hardware solutions in both its wireline and wireless networks to provide ultra-low latency exchange access and market data feeds across financial markets in London, Frankfurt, New York, Chicago and Tokyo and emerging markets in Eastern Europe, APAC and Latin America.