This Week: CME/IHS, Nasdaq, Snowflake/Clearwater, Bloomberg/Rockefeller, FlexTrade

CME Group, IHS Markit Team to Create New Post-Trade Company

CME Group and IHS Markit announced that they have agreed to combine their post-trade services into a new joint venture. The new company will bring together CME’s Traiana, TriOptima, and Reset business units and combine them with IHS Markit’s MarkitSERV derivatives processing hub.

The combination of these businesses will provide clients with platforms and services for global over-the-counter (OTC) markets across interest rate, foreign exchange (FX), equity and credit asset classes. The new company will look to create more efficient workflows and improved connectivity, which will help OTC market participants to improve risk management and post-trade operations.

Nasdaq Launches New Risk Platform

Nasdaq has unveiled the Nasdaq Risk Platform, which is targeted at the sell-side and clearing-broker communities. The cloud-based risk platform provides visibility of initial margin, counterparty risk controls, and risk-adjusted outcomes across asset classes. It also has an open risk aggregation framework that allows integration of market data sources and risk models, which will allow users to consolidate multiple asset-specific point solutions for risk management into a single multi-asset solution.

The Nasdaq Risk Platform provides multi-asset coverage across equities, derivatives, and commodities venues globally. It also allows for real-time exchange margin replication; historical market data services; position, exposure, and profit and loss calculations; and value-at-risk (VaR), stress testing, and scenario analysis for market risk.

Clearwater Analytics Automates Snowflake’s Investment Portfolio Operations

Snowflake has implemented Clearwater Analytics’ investment data management, reconciliation, and reporting solution to facilitate daily operations for its growing investment portfolio. Snowflake selected Clearwater in April 2020, ahead of its September IPO.

“We were a private company with a couple investment managers and we knew that post-IPO, our approach would need to be much more sophisticated,” said Snowflake senior treasury manager David Steffa. “With Clearwater at the center of our investment operations process, we now easily monitor the outcomes of our four asset managers with the same small treasury team. We’ve grown extraordinarily fast and Clearwater has been instrumental in our ability to do so.”

TFI Taps FlexTrade’s OMS to Replace Bloomberg SSEOMS

China-based TF International (TFI) has selected FlexTrade Systems’ order management system, FlexOMS, to replace Bloomberg’s Sell-Side Execution and Order Management Solutions (SSEOMS). TFI has also gone live on FlexOMS’s new middle-office system MOS, and the new Hong Kong Stock Exchange gateway providing direct access to the exchange.

As was first reported by WatersTechnology in August 2019, Bloomberg made the decision to exit two key lines of business: its SSEOMS unit and its know-your-customer (KYC) business, which includes Entity Exchange and Entity Intelligence.

TFI provides institutional brokerage services to trade in equities on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Bloomberg, Rockefeller Asset Management Launch ESG Index

Bloomberg and Rockefeller Asset Management have teamed to launch the Bloomberg Rockefeller US All Cap Multi-Factor ESG Improvers Index, which is available through the Bloomberg Terminal. The index combines Bloomberg’s risk model, data, and index capabilities with 40 years of environmental, social and governance (ESG) expertise from Rockefeller Asset Management. The index ranks a company’s improvement in performance on material ESG issues relative to industry peers.

This multi-factor index combines the Rockefeller ESG Improvers Score, an uncorrelated and proprietary factor, with quality and low-volatility factors to pursue outperformance over traditional market-cap weighted indices. It also incorporates shareholder engagement techniques that help create shareholder value and catalyze positive change.

“We believe that investors will increasingly differentiate between ESG leaders and improvers—firms showing the greatest improvement in their ESG footprint,” said Casey Clark, managing director and global head of ESG Investments at Rockefeller Asset Management. “And that the latter offers a greater potential for generating uncorrelated alpha over the long-term.”