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SunGard Buys TimeSquare

Financial services IT giant SunGard has acquired reference data management software provider TimeSquare from Soliton, officials from the company say. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

TimeSquare's software is used by asset managers and financial institutions to consolidate global reference data from multiple platforms. The product will be merged into SunGard's referencePoint division following the completion of the sale. Janet Crowley, president of the referencePoint business unit, says of the deal: "TimeSquare complements SunGard's current data management offerings by bringing additional knowledge and expertise in managed data services, helping meet the market data, reference data and time series data requirements of financial institutions."

Cicada Opens AML Subsidiary

Data management and compliance software vendor Cicada has announced the formation of Profiler Solutions, a specialist anti-money laundering (AML) solution provider. Hubert Holmes, Cicada's executive vice-president, will head the unit.

The new business' flagship product, Profiler, incorporates compliance standards into a client data management system to provide automated risk ratings, checklists and customer classifications so institutions can meet regulatory requirements for customer profiling.

Gregory Smith, chief executive of Cicada, says: "By forming a dedicated business unit we can focus and drive our efforts in helping our customers achieve improved efficiencies in their compliance business processes."

DST Links with DataScope

DST International (DSTi) has formed an alliance with Reuters. DSTi will now offer an integrated interface to Reuters DataScope Select as part of its Investment Accounting, Performance Measurement, Risk Management and Data Management Solutions.

John Kirkby, head of market data systems at DSTi, says: "The combination of DSTi's solutions for the investment management community with Reuters' comprehensive data coverage will provide our common customers with a sophisticated platform on which to conduct their business."

Altium Renews Perfect

London-based investment bank, Altium, has renewed its subscription to Perfect Information's repository of financial information. This renewal includes a significant increase in Altium's usage of Perfect Information's data.

The renewal underlines the success of a two-year relationship with Altium.

Perfect Information is providing the pan-European investment banking group with its display, charting and analytical tool, Perfect Analysis. Perfect Analysis is a global securities tool that combines with leading sources of financial information to cover more than 100,000 global securities.

Perfect Analysis provides news, fundamental company data, pricing and economic data, broker forecasts and global indexes.

Greg Feehely, head of research at Altium Securities, says: "It was particularly important that we chose a product that incorporated functionality to help users save time. With Perfect Analysis, we have found charting tools, intuitive reporting and viewing formats and more, which help us fulfill this requirement."

CB.Net Adds BIC Codes

CB.Net has added Swift-enabled routing Bank Identifier Codes (BICs) to its international payments directory BankSearchPlus, part of the CB.Net Payments Reference Data Service (PRDS).

The move will ensure CB.Net's global client base has access to the international payments reference data 'golden copy' to meet the requirements of the Single European Payments Area (Sepa) and significantly reduce cross-border transaction costs.

Ian Dunning, managing director of CB.Net, says: "From January 2008, International Bank Account Numbers (IBANs) and Bank Identifier Codes are required on all payment instructions within the Eurozone. However, there are around 6,000 banks within the Sepa zone that are not connected to Swift and who use third-party correspondent banks to route payments via Swift on their behalf. The complex nature of payment routing, therefore, adds to the data management challenge of realizing Sepa."

Nasdaq Plans SIP Changes

Nasdaq expects to make changes to its Securities Information Processor (SIP) by the end of this year, to comply with the reporting rules of Reg NMS.

The SIP consolidates trades from each participant in the Unlisted Trading Privileges scheme, processes quote changes and last tick values and then sends them to redistributing data vendors.

The current format for UTP participants does not give sufficient data on a trade to meet the requirements of Reg NMS-for example, when an exchange needs to identify a trade as trade-through exempt, says Randall Hopkins, vice-president of Nasdaq market data distribution.

Currently, only one byte of a message is used to describe the state of a trade. This will be expanded to four bytes to offer more granular identification.

Other format changes will identify which UTP participant is providing the best bid and offer, as well as providing a new Prior Day As-Of trade message to add a trade that should have been reported or to correct an error in a report.

Nasdaq has produced the specifications for the changes and is currently working out the details of testing and production. Hopkins says the exchange expects to begin testing the changes by year-end. Vendors will need to implement new software to accommodate the larger data formats and the restatement of certain processes, he says.

Sun Advances in Payments

Sun Microsystems has announced the second phase of its faster payment strategy with the launch of the New Open Payment Suite. Building on its Consolidated Payments Architecture (CPA), launched last year at Sibos and as well as its acquisition of Seebeyond in 2005, this next phase offers of a range of technologies that aim to address the particular challenges facing the payments industry.

Sun has integrated its CPA and Open Payments Bus to create a service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform. This real-time platform comes pre-integrated with Payment Partner applications and is designed to transform fragmented legacy systems, while maximizing the re-use of existing assets. Sun's Open Payment Suite includes the new Swift Message Monitor solution that allows financial firms to automatically audit Swift traffic as it flows through their organizations, positively impacting operational risk and compliance. The suite was developed to broaden banking services in the area of financial supply chain services as banks seek to deepen their value propositions to corporate clients. Based on Sun's experience in designing and implementing technologies in support of ACH and clearance infrastructures, these technologies support changes in clearing, settling, and CSD developments worldwide.

SunGard Links with Dow Jones

SunGard plans to integrate Dow Jones CDX and iTraxx index pricing within its Decalog portfolio management solution. The index pricing is provided by Markit Group, the calculation agent for both indexes. SunGard's Decalog CDS (credit default swaps) module covers the full order/trade life cycle including novation and default event management. It already offers a generic pricing solution that is certified and integrated with other products. This new integration completes the module offering.

Mark Hunt, director of product development at Markit, says: "As the buy-side gets more exposure to credit derivatives, the integration of the CDX and iTraxx indexes within SunGard's Decalog solution is a key component for investment managers globally. We are pleased to help SunGard in our capacity as calculation agent for both families of credit derivative indexes to help provide SunGard's Decalog users with additional accuracy and transparency in their trading environment."

WSS Hooks up to Markit

Wall Street Systems (WSS) has integrated Markit Group's reference entity database (RED) and credit default swap (CDS) and corporate bond price data into its Wall Street System product, according to officials at the vendor. WSS believes the tie-up will open up the credit derivatives market to increased automation and reduce the current high number of trades that fail due to inconsistent data.

Mark Hunt, director of product development at Markit, says: "The dramatic growth and ever-changing landscape of the credit markets means customers demand integrated access to quality data within mission-critical systems to better support the key trading, risk and operational processes required by business today. [This move] will bring significant added value to our mutual customers."

TAPMaster Adds FTS

Market and reference data software provider TAP Solutions has added the FTS portfolio management tool from FT Interactive Data to its TAPMaster feed manager, according to TAP officials.

TAPMaster collects data feeds from internal and vendor sources and standardizes and stores their content, and already links to several FT Interactive Data products, including SIRS, IDSI and MuniView.

NYFIX Links with Paladyne

Paladyne Systems, the hedge fund technology vendor, and trade automation and workstation provider NYFIX have announced a joint agreement to market FIX connectivity to hedge fund clients under the 'Powered by NYFIX' mark, officials at both companies say.

Paladyne will supply clients of its hosted ASP product, which includes the Paladyne Securities Master, via the NYFIX Network, as well as providing access to the NYFIX Millennium dark pool liquidity service and the NEXAS algorithmic trading suite. Barry Smith, senior vice-president for business development at NYFIX, says: "The 'Powered by NYFIX' offering enables users to seamlessly integrate the NYFIX Network with their proprietary technology. By leveraging Paladyne's hosted ASP solution, we expect to reach a large number of hedge funds that want a turn-key electronic trading and order-routing solution."

Hemscott Adds UK Data to Abacus

UK-based fundamental data provider Hemscott will next month roll out a UK version of Abacus, a spreadsheet-based interface to its fundamental data that is designed for sell-side and buy-side research analysts.

In October, the vendor will add fundamental data on UK-listed equities to Abacus, which launched in July with fundamental data on US and Canadian equities going back more than 20 years, says Jon Brickman, executive vice-president and head of global sales at Hemscott.

Global pricing data, including open/close, high/low and total return, will follow in November. Brickman says this will enable users to generate charts and gauge price momentum.

Abacus is a private-labeled version of SunGard's Fame desktop add-in for Microsoft Excel, which gives users access to balance sheet and income statement data, such as cashflows and directional data. Users download the add-in, which plugs into their Excel software and communicates via the Internet with Fame's data servers. The servers collect Hemscott data for use in Fame's own data products.

Customers can also use the add-in to define what data they want to receive, and directly populate that data into Excel-based models, says Francis Wenzel, vice-president of product management at Fame. "A typical user might be an investment analyst wanting to create a model to evaluate a company based on historic performance and various fields," he says.

Brickman says the Excel interface is intended to make it quicker and easier to access Hemscott's data. He says without it, analysts must find their own alternatives to process and display data from ASCII files.