Citadel Takes Asset Control

Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel Investment Group signed up last week to use Asset Control's AC Plus software to manage data used across the firm. Citadel expects that the platform will also help it eliminate certain data vendors.

David Hirschfeld, managing director of IT at Citadel, says the firm needed a platform that could normalize and arbitrate data from multiple feeds and deliver it to front- and back-office applications. Citadel had been doing this with in-house technology.

He says the firm considered Financial Technologies International, Eagle, Soliton and Cicada, but chose Asset Control for its software, strong client commitment and expertise.

Latency was also a priority. "Scalability and performance drives our decision making," Hirschfeld says. "Other companies will get the job done, but when you start scaling up, some don't perform at the level we require."

Besides data management, AC Plus offers another advantage: "It gives us the ability to do more data analysis of our feeds," says Hirschfeld, to the extent that Citadel will be able to eliminate data vendors that aren't providing enough value for money. "We are data hounds and are aggressive about acquiring data, but we want to look at the value utility."

As part of the deal, Citadel has asked Asset Control to enhance AC Plus's normalization and workflow capabilities as well as improve the way it matches securities, Hirschfeld says. These changes will become part of AC Plus and will be available to other clients.

Ger Rosenkamp, president and CEO of Asset Control, says this is typical of the vendor's client relationships. "It's a normal step to do things jointly, but it's more and more difficult to find customers with the expertise to take the next step," he says.

The first deliverable is due in September, and the software will be rolled out business by business.

Citadel is Asset Control's second hedge fund client in the US. News of the deal came amid rumors that Asset Control was in talks to be bought by SunGard, but Rosenkamp dismissed the reports, saying, "We are not for sale."