News Briefs

JPMorgan is live on SwapsWire's PBWire and is using the system to automate the 'give up' of OTC interest rate derivatives for its prime brokerage clients. JPMorgan's PB product supported by PBWire offers clients and executing brokers real-time trade notifications, STP and electronic confirmations. Currently 15 dealers use PBWire to provide trade notifications and electronically confirm executed trades.

Executing brokers use PBWire to send trade details to prime brokers and their clients in real time. The client and prime broker can use PBWire to signal their agreement to the trade immediately, meaning give-up trades are agreed and fully documented within minutes.

Reuters has expanded its DataScope Fixed Income evaluated pricing service to include 12 new currencies including: Danish Krone, Swedish Krona, Norwegian Kroner, Iceland Krona, Hungarian Forint, Polish New Zloty, Czech Koruna, Slovak Koruna, Russian Rouble, Turkish Lira, South African Rand and Japanese Yen.

Reuters currently generates evaluated pricing on over 1.3 million securities worldwide. Reuters DataScope for Fixed Income offers global fixed- income data for a range of instruments in capital markets spanning more than 125 countries located in North and South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific.

Quantifi, the New York-based provider of analytics and risk management solutions to the global credit markets, has opened a London office and appointed John Peck as head of European sales. Reporting directly to Rohan Douglas, founder and chief executive of Quantifi, Peck will focus on building on the firm's London presence.

Panopticon Software, the Stockholm-based provider of visual business intelligence software and part of the Hamsard Group, has unveiled a new version of Panopticon Explorer .Net. Features include visualisation of search results achieved by integrating with Microsoft Windows Desktop Search (WDS) technologies allowing users to see patterns in their data, regardless of format.

According to Panopticon, the new offering takes visual data analysis a step further, allowing users to visualise search results for e-mails, documents, spreadsheets and other searchable enterprise resources.

Oko Asset Management, part of the Finnish Oko Banking Group, has chosen to extend the use SimCorp Dimension to handle its front to back operations after acquiring Pohjola Group, which previously used the system. With @28bn assets under management, Oko Asset Management has a significant presence in the Finnish market. According to SimCorp, in order to select a common platform for the future, Oko Asset Management conducted a review of several vendors before selecting SimCorp Dimension.

DST International (DSTi), the UK-based provider of investment management technology, has launched Derivatives Solution, a derivatives trading and processing platform which the vendor claims "is set to transform the automation of trading and administration of complex derivatives". Designed to be used with in-house and other packaged environments, Derivatives Solution is pre-integrated with HiPortfolio, DSTi's investment accounting platform.

SDS Financial Technologies, a New York-based provider of e-trading technology and market data, has unveiled SDS Trader, the firm's direct market access platform. SDS Trader was launched in mid-June and includes domestic equities and options. Phase two will occur later this year and includes suppport for futures. SDS Trader is a multi-asset class trading platform with direct exchange connectivity and risk management.

Features include:

• Real-time market data

• Direct market access

• Broker-neutral trading

• VMAP, basket, pegged and reserve order functionality

• Algorithmic trading capabilities

• Real-time P&L

• Centralised real-time risk management

• Fix interface

Trading Technologies International and Eze Castle Software have completed the integration of Eze Castle's Traders Console order management system (OMS) with X_Trader, Trading Technologies' futures trading platform. The integration is designed to allow mutual clients to trade global and domestic futures electronically. The integration was achieved using the Financial Information eXchange (Fix) protocol.

Hal Investments BV, a Dutch investment fund, will roll out Thomson Financial's Thomson One Investment Management platform. According to Thomson Financial, it was awarded the contract because it was the only vendor able to satisfy Hal Investments' market data requirements. Under the terms of the three-year contract, Thomson Financial will deploy 20 positions of the Thomson One Investment Management application.

Castlegrove Capital Management, a hedge fund set up by three ex-managing directors of JPMorgan's Global Equity derivatives group, has launched a global micro fund – an equity-focused strategy covering long/short equity, equity derivatives and capital structures – on SunGard's Front Arena platform. According to SunGard, Castlegrove will "take advantage of multi-asset opportunities utilising the variance swaps, CFDs, credit and equity derivatives and convertible bonds functionality within Front Arena, including cross-asset pricing, analytics, position and risk management".

Thomson Financial is set to launch version 8.0 of its Portia portfolio management platform.

Highlights include:

• The corporate actions module provides optimised workflow management capability, supporting multiple actions and users involved in corporate actions processing

• New access module provides controls necessary to meet ISO 17799 and Sarbanes-Oxley evolving security requirements

• Security and price imports are 10-20X faster with advance import capability

• New report manager provides new interface for organising reports and calculations

SunGard has launched Adaptiv Analytics for the computation of complex risk calculations. Adaptiv Analytics provides a framework for distributing portfolio-level risk calculations across a grid of servers. According to the vendor, by utilising modern technologies, Adaptiv Analytics supports extensibility in trade, risk factor and portfolio models to keep pace with product and methodology evolution, while providing scalability of hardware to meet increasing volumes. Adaptiv Analytics is available on a stand-alone basis and also acts as the core calculation engine for Adaptiv's market and credit risk solutions.

Principia Partners, has incorporated Standard & Poor's Securities Evaluations (SPSE) intraday pricing service for US and European structured finance bonds into Principia SFP. Principia SFP is designed to manage and administer structured finance operations as well as asset-backed securities and mortgage-based securities (ABS/MBS) and structured credit investment management.

The SPSE service provides intraday and daily valuations on more than 1.1 million US and European structured finance securities, including ABS, RMBS (residential asset-backed securities) and CMBS (commercial asset-backed securities).

SunGard has released version 6.0 of InvestOne Enterprise, the vendor's investment accounting solution for institutional and alternative asset managers and third-party administrators. SunGard says version 6.0 marks the first general release of InvestOne Enterprise's next-generation technology platform and a continuation of its evolution into a configurable, enterprise solution based on an extensible and scalable service-oriented architecture (SOA). InvestOne Enterprise now processes more than $10 trillion in assets across 42,000 funds and supports virtually any type of portfolio, including mutual funds, hedge funds, funds of hedge funds, UK unit trusts, OEICs (open-ended investment companies), and institutional funds.

Highlights include:

• The ability to create a customised browser-based desktop and role-based workflows

• A platform-independent, scalable architecture available on an ASP or installed basis

• Message-based integration with third-party systems and data sources for straight-through processing (STP)

• Meta data-driven architecture allowing users to tailor the user interface without modifying the source code

• Web-based administration features for system configuration and maintenance

Orc Software, the Stockholm-based provider of trading, market making and brokerage technology, now provides direct trading access to the FXall and Hotspot FXi alternative trading systems for foreign exchange. Orc says this arrangement marks a significant expansion of Orc Software into global FX, providing clients with the ability to hedge currency transactions and implement complex algorithmic trading strategies across asset classes on multiple global markets. The Orc System, Orc Software's direct market access platform, links to FXall and Hotspot FXi via the Fix protocol, providing clients with both instantaneous order entry capabilities and real-time market data.

Orc's recently acquired Fix solutions specialist Cameron Systems provides the Fix connectivity services using the CameronFIX Platform for FXall's QuickFill and QuickTrade products.

Thomson Financial has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AFX News Ltd from Agence France-Presse. AFX, based in London is an independent, real-time financial news agency providing equity-focused business, financial and economic news to the investment community. The transaction is expected to close this month (July 2006) subject to regulatory review (in Germany). Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Microgen, the Hampshire, UK-based provider of wealth management software to the financial services industry, has announced that their 4Series solution is to be implemented at the Trinidad and Jamaica operations of Guardian Asset Management. In addition to this, Microgen Aptitude will be used to integrate 4Series to Microgen's business partner, Business Architects, and their 'eXimius' product, providing an integrated best-of-breed, front-to-back-office solution.

London-based Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) has issued a new publication to its member companies, AIMA's Guide to Sound Practices for Business Continuity Management for Hedge Fund Managers. With the growing use of hedge funds by institutional investors, fund managers are now required to build, test and review their contingency plans to identify any threats to their business. AIMA has responded to this need by producing a guide to business continuity and crisis management. The guide has been specifically written for hedge fund managers, based on an understanding of investor requirements and regulatory expectations.

Key topics include:

• Identification of risk

• Identification of systems, processes and the other information that make up the enterprise

• Definition of recovery requirements

• Development of recovery plans

• Testing and providing the plans to ensure they work

• Maintenance and updating of the plan.