Feature
Regulators Take Aim at Market Malfeasance with Industry-Supplied Surveillance System
The SEC has shown global regulators the way with its adoption of Tradeworx’s Midas market data feed and plans for software testing and a consolidated audit trail. But is it too little, too late? By Steve Dew-Jones
Front-Office Data Focus Spurs IBOR Push
Data management and aggregation are perennial challenges for all market participants. But for buy-side firms, elements of these disciplines have crystallized into an Investment Book of Record—an overview combining position-level data, cash flows,…
Dark Clouds For Off-Site Data
Cloud computing has caught on as a buzzword, but it still has trouble gaining acceptance for use in financial industry operations. Michael Shashoua reports on the difficulties reference data managers have with deploying the cloud to save costs while…
Taxing Times
Decisions by France and Italy to introduce taxes on financial transactions have created new challenges for data managers who must identify all instruments that are affected. As more European countries plan to roll out similar taxes, firms will have to…
Clearing Trade Reporting Hurdles
With many firms now familiar with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's trade reporting requirements, the next big challenge is the European Market Infrastructure Regulation. Once these two have been overcome, new reporting requirements in other…
Lord's Tech as Savior: Michael Radziemski's Tech Vision Helps Lord Abbett Weather Hurricane Sandy
Michael Radziemski has spent the last decade helping to make Lord Abbett & Co.’s IT more mobile and scalable in order to drive the asset manager’s aggressive growth strategy. That strategy proved particularly valuable after Hurricane Sandy battered the…
Outsourcing: In Search of Secret Sauce
Sell-side institutions continue to find value in outsourcing services, especially within the back office, but there is much room for improvement. By Steve Dew-Jones
New 'Agora' Enables Shift in Quants' Roles
Flush with financial engineering knowledge as never before, firms are deploying quants to tackle new challenges. Tim Bourgaize Murray reports on a fresh discourse among them about technology—including communication, memory, and intuition—indicating a new…
Optimize: The How and Who
Collateral optimization is a reality for a few institutions, an attainable goal for a few others, and a pipe dream for the rest. In the second part of his feature on optimization, Jake Thomases checks in on who is optimizing and who isn’t, and on what an…
Pulp Fiction: The Case for Dematerialization
Starting around the mid-1980s, securities depositories and the financial services industry as a whole began to move toward a process of converting paper stock certificates to electronic formats. Reasons of market efficiency and risk reduction are cited…
AIFMD: No Alternative to Harmonization
With the Level 2 measures of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive now published, managers and third-party providers are analyzing whether they have all the data and technology they need for compliance
Evaluating the Quality Chain
Is data management carrying out all the imperatives set by regulations intended to address risk issues? Michael Shashoua assesses the chain of cause and effect linking new rules with data quality and operational issues
No Easy FIX: Brokers Eye Outsourcing FIX Connections
FIX costs have long been a thorn in the side of more than a few brokers. While many still insist on managing their FIX connectivity internally, others have chosen to outsource this service to third-party providers. The question remains: Is the benefit…
Head in the Clouds: Impax COO Darren Johnson
After cutting his teeth at a variety of high-stress jobs in the City of London, Darren Johnson finally struck a balance between hard work and tranquility. Now as COO of Impax Asset Management, he sees the future in the cloud. By Steve Dew-Jones with…
IFRS 13 Driving Level 3 Coding Work
End users are figuring out how to determine levels for quotes and code accounting data
The UX Factor: Visual Design Meets Finance
Financial applications once eschewed Marshall McLuhan’s famous argument—that the “medium is the massage”—by prioritizing function and cost over the beauty of the interface. No longer, experts say. Tim Bourgaize Murray reports on a design revolution that…
Optimize: The Whens and the Whys
Collateral optimization systems are coming into vogue as a means of handling some of the obligations of Dodd–Frank and EMIR. In part one of a two-part feature, Jake Thomases examines exactly what about the current market is prompting the adoption, and…
Art and Science: Credit Valuation Challenge II
Although the technical requirements for calculating credit valuation adjustment can be significant, other factors also need to be considered in order for an efficient counterparty risk management operation to be established. The second part of this…
Getting Some Actions
Corporate actions processing professionals have been waiting to see their tasks streamlined. Michael Shashoua reports on who's making progress and who's been slowed by obstacles
Communicate and Aggregate
As regulations and reduced budgets add to existing challenges, data professionals point to standards and shared services as the best way to improve risk management and achieve straight-through processing, writes Nicholas Hamilton
Start Me Up: Startups Shake Up the Field
Nearly everyone in the financial technology arena knows someone who’s worked with an entrepreneur in the early stages of a business. Building something from the ground up into a profitable enterprise is a common dream. Jake Thomases takes a look at four…
Empire Builder: Blackstone CTO William Murphy
Rising from an unlikely introduction to technology, Blackstone Group’s CTO Bill Murphy explains how the firm’s infrastructure, new products, and a fresh mindset are supporting its rapid diversification. By Tim Bourgaize Murray with photos by Amy Fletcher
No Small Gamble: DR and BCP Post-Sandy
Heightened awareness of catastrophe showed itself as technology providers of all ilk endured the landfall and aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Tim Bourgaize Murray asks the industry for a primer in disaster recovery and business continuity, discovering a…
Credit Valuation Challenge
Following the financial crisis and the subsequent influx of new regulation into the capital markets, credit valuation adjustment has seen a significant uptick in interest among financial services firms. For large-scale banks and other entities with…