FiNETIK – Asia and Latin America – Market News Network

Asia and Latin America News Network focusing on Financial Markets, Energy, Environment, Commodity and Risk, Trading and Data Management

March 9, 2012 • 4:27 pm 2

LSE: London Stock Exchange was award for Financial Information Commercial Policiy

The Financial Information Services Division (FISD)’s Consumer Constituency Group (CCG) today honored the London Stock Exchange with the first-ever “Best of the Best” Award for Excellence in Financial Information Commercial Policies. The award, presented today in Paris, is given on an ad-hoc basis when a supplier demonstrates excellence in the development and roll-out of new administrative policies.

The London Stock Exchange was selected for the first-ever ‘Bobbie’ award for its dedication to responding to customer needs, development of a simple, standardized administrative process, and adherence to industry best practices.

“London Stock Exchange Group is committed to providing the highest levels of service, responding to our customer’s needs as well as following industry best practices. We are proud to have been awarded the first ever ‘Bobbie’ award and hope that it drives further innovation in commercial and administrative policies across the industry. It is particularly important to us that this award is presented from our key sell-side and buy-side firms, as an endorsement that we are truly aligned with our clients.” said Jarod Hillman, Head of Real Time Data for the London Stock Exchange Group.

The CCG was particularly impressed with the introduction of a per-user model, which allows netting across vendors. It simplifies the unit of count, which allows for the introduction of a new non-display charge, along with its new non-display policy. It is the hope of the group that the award will serve as an incentive for all suppliers to implement their policies with equal clarity and reasonableness.

“Over the last several years consumer firms have changed their consumption patterns for market data products and services and are increasingly meeting business needs through the distribution of services to computing platforms as opposed to the historically dominant use case of desktop services. Market data providers continue to adjust to these changes through new products and new commercial policies often with the consequence of increasingly complex polices, added administrative burdens to consumers, and rising costs overall,” said Steve Listhaus, Co-Chair, FISD Consumer Constituency Group.

“The London Stock Exchange invited customers, via the FISD umbrella, to review and comment on a proposed new policy for derived data and non-display usage.  Their final policy reflected the input of FISD consumer firms and demonstrated sensitivity to the issues of complexity and cost.  Therefore the CCG is pleased to recognize LSE for their collaborative approach and understanding of the key concerns of the FISD consumer constituency.”

Source: MondoVisione, 09.03.2012

Filed under: Data Vendor, Exchanges, , ,

March 9, 2012 • 2:39 pm 0

Thomson Reuters fails RIC licensing market test – Symbology

Thomson Reuters has failed to appease EU antitrust bodies over proposed concessions in the way it licenses the proprietary Reuters Instrument Codes.

In 2009 the European Commission opened antitrust proceedings against Thomson Reuters over possible abuse of its dominant market position in the supply of RICs – codes that identify securities and are used by financial institutions to retrieve data from Thomson Reuters’ real-time feeds.The EC argued that the firm could be abusing its dominant position in the market for these consolidated real-time datafeeds by stopping customers from using RICs for retrieving data from alternative providers and mapping them for such a purpose to alternative symbols.

In an attempt to ward off further action by the Commission, the vendor agreed to let customers license RICs for mapping purposes over a five-year period for a monthly fee based on the number of RIC symbols to be used.

However, in a speech in Copenhagen today, EU competition chief Joaquín Almunia, said that a market test of the new measures had failed to deliver a desirable outcome.

“We have now reached a critical stage in this investigation,” said Almunia. “If no effective solution can be agreed upon, then we will have to draw the adequate conclusions.”

The company could face fines of up to 10% of its turnover if it does not offer further concessions to users.

Thomson Reuters’ rival Bloomberg has moved to make its own proprietary symbology available for free to developers and market practitioners.

Filed under: Data Vendor, Market Data, News, Reference Data, , , , , , ,

March 8, 2012 • 10:26 am 0

White Paper: LEI Readiness – Instant Integration

White Paper: LEI Readiness – Instant Integration with Alacra Concordance

The idea of an LEI pre-dates the 2008 financial crisis by several decades. The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) had advocated an LEI (at one time called the IBEI – International Business Entity Identifier) for many years, but was unable to pinpoint an organization ready to build and maintain such a directory. For many securities industry participants, existing identifiers, such as the Bank Identifier Code (BIC), met most of the market’s needs.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers revealed the problems firms faced in readily identifying their counterparty exposure. With critical data residing in multiple, unconnected silos, many firms had no way to calculate their counterparty risk across front, middle, and back office systems. This damaged reputations, led to tremendous financial losses, unleashed law suits, and brought into focus the dire need for a system to uniquely identify entities.

Download the Free White Paper Now

Source: A-TEAM, 08.03.2012

Filed under: Data Management, Data Vendor, Library, Market Data, Reference Data, Standards, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 6, 2012 • 10:05 am 0

NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions partners with Chinese PR NEWS

NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions today announced that its leading newswire, GlobeNewswire, will broaden its long-term partnership with China PRNews to bring global news distribution to Chinese companies. Through this agreement, China PRNews will offer GlobeNewswire’s robust global distribution platform to its clients in China and provide Chinese companies with greater visibility opportunities outside of their market.

The relationship between GlobeNewswire and China PRNews is longstanding — since 2006, they have collaborated on several initiatives to increase the visibility of companies from around the world within China.

GlobeNewswire is one of the world’s largest newswire distribution networks, specializing in the delivery of corporate press releases, financial disclosures and multimedia content to the media, investment community, individual investors and the general public. GlobeNewswire’s extensive distribution network currently reaches more than 4,000 media outlets and 1.5 million financial desktops globally.

China PRnews is one of the strongest news distribution and media monitoring platforms in China, serving more than 3,000 prestigious Chinese companies and organizations. Its broad coverage of Chinese local media has been highly recognized by the industry, customers and partners since its inception in 2004.

Demetrios Skalkotos, Senior Vice President, NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions: “NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions continues to look for ways to help Asian companies minimize risk, maximize efficiency and increase transparency with relevant tools and solutions for PR, IR and governance professionals. Through our daily work with the leading Chinese companies listed on our exchange, we recognized the need for greater visibility channels for Chinese companies globally. We’re excited to expand our relationship with China PRNews and offer GlobeNewswire’s far-reaching distribution platform to Chinese companies looking to target markets outside their own.”

Forrest, Xiangning Zhang, Chairman of China PRnews: “The need for Chinese companies to establish global public relations and investor relations coverage has become increasingly prominent. You can’t expect a customer to buy or an investor to invest if they know nothing about a company. The globalization process has put China into the direct trade and investment scope of the world market. Our strong partnership with GlobeNewswire under NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions allows China PRnews to offer easy and efficient ways to distribute Chinese companies’ news to the global community, providing the world with rich and first hand information about China. We are excited to broaden our long-term partnership with GlobeNewswire.”

In a continued effort to provide Asian companies with the localized tools necessary to help them be more efficient and transparent public companies, NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions also recently announced the appointment of Dan Wadsworth, Vice President of Corporate Solutions, based in Hong Kong.

Source: MondoVisione, 05.03.2012

Filed under: Asia, China, Data Vendor, Exchanges, Hong Kong, News, , , , ,

March 5, 2012 • 12:05 pm 0

Japan:ICAP extends data partnership with QUICK

Tokyo; London – 5 March 2012  ICAP, the world’s leading interdealer broker, announces today that it has extended its long-established distribution partnership with Japan’s QUICK Corp. (QUICK), one of the leading suppliers of real-time financial information.  The new three-year agreement will continue the provision of ICAP’s data products and services to QUICK customers in Japan and internationally via QUICK’s ActiveManager and Astra product series.

ICAP Information Services is responsible for the collection, storage, packaging and delivery of data, sourced from ICAP’s award-winning global interdealer trading platforms. ICAP works with market participants and market data distributors to provide key real-time, snapshot, end-of-day and historical data to financial institutions and corporations.

ICAP data provides unique market insight to customers seeking to apply authoritative transactional data to a range of business activities. ICAP real-time data offerings cover an extensive range of asset classes and instruments, including Interest Rates, FX and Fixed Income products.

Damien Fitzpatrick, Head of Asia Information Sales ICAP said, ‘The renewal of this agreement underscores the strength of our longstanding relationship with QUICK and our continued commitment to providing critical financial information to the Japanese market.  We are delighted to extend our contract with QUICK, under which we will continue to supply critical OTC market data.’

Gakuji Takahashi, Executive General Manager of QUICK said, “QUICK is pleased to renew our contract with ICAP Information Services and continue our long standing and very active business partnership. ICAP’s data services are pivotal to our customer base when making trading decisions in the OTC markets. This agreement with ICAP will enable us to continue to provide our customers with authoritative market data across Japan and worldwide.  Cooperating with ICAP, QUICK works positively to meet the clients’ high expectations.”

Source: Bobsguide, 05.03.2012

Filed under: Data Vendor, Japan, News, , , ,

March 2, 2012 • 6:23 pm 0

Bloomberg boosts network speed and efficiency in Asia

Bloomberg L.P., financial data, news and analytics provider, has extended availability of its enterprise data services in markets throughout Asia. An efficient network of data centers across the region enables the delivery of reliable collocation, connectivity and infrastructure services along with reduced latency in data distribution.

The expansion of low-latency services throughout Asia includes Equinix Inc.‘s Hong Kong and Sydney-based International Business Exchange (IBXÒ) data centers, further strengthening the existing Bloomberg deployments in New York, Chicago, Slough and Frankfurt. Current and prospective customers located inside these Equinix IBX data centers can now directly connect to Bloomberg’s real time data, B-Pipe and Event Driven Trading feeds.

The coordinated service delivery also benefits customers of Bloomberg’s agency broker, Bloomberg Tradebook, in New York, London and Hong Kong.

“Together, Equinix and Bloomberg address a market need for secure and reliable connectivity to multiple partners simultaneously,” said John Knuff, general manager, global financial services at Equinix. “The expansion of services into Asia enables Bloomberg customers to leverage our global footprint of data centers. And Bloomberg’s presence across these markets adds further value to the global financial ecosystem inside Equinix.”

Source: NetworkAsia,02.03.2012

Filed under: Asia, Australia, Data Vendor, Hong Kong, Japan, Market Data, Singapore, , , , , ,

February 14, 2012 • 10:02 am 0

Deutsche Börse developing new business – all Data and IT related activities pooled into IT.

By way of underpinning its growth strategy, Deutsche Börse is creating a new business area geared to extending its client reach and service offering. In this move, notably IT with its system and service development and operating capabilities, Market Data and Analytics as well as selected external services are to be pooled under one roof. This includes, for example, the use of trading systems for other exchange companies, the business process offering in its entirety, IT operations for other financial service providers as well as network services.

The goal on the one hand is to tap new, integrated business opportunities while, on the other, supporting clients with tailored IT and other services, thereby further enhancing customer loyalty, broadening client reach and meeting the growing demand for outsourcing services with an expanded range of services.

Reto Francioni, CEO of Deutsche Börse AG, said: “Our services, also in the field of IT in particular, put us firmly in the premier league of global providers. Deploying our combined expertise and capabilities to optimum effect in customer acquisition, competition for market share and regional presence will be increasingly important when it comes to boosting the Group’s international positions. This sends out a clear mandate to our new business area to play a key role as a critical and strategic competitive factor for Deutsche Börse AG going forward, as well as to harness and expand cross-selling potential with our existing business areas.”

In addition, to the launch of the new business unit there will be a change in the top management of the IT business unit. Dr.-Ing. Michael Kuhn (57) and Deutsche Börse AG agreed on the best of terms and by mutual consent that the Executive Board contract of Michael Kuhn due to run out at the end of 2012 will not be extended. The company is looking for a successor. Michael Kuhn will be available for the company.

Supervisory Board Chairman Manfred Gentz and CEO Reto Francioni thanked Michael Kuhn for his total of 23 years’ service for the Deutsche Börse Group. He has been a member of the Group Executive Board since 1999. “We wish to express our gratitude to Michael Kuhn and his team. It is thanks to him and his colleagues that Deutsche Börse AG sets global standards with its systems,” said Gentz.

Source: MondoVisione, 14.02.2012

Filed under: Data Management, Data Vendor, Exchanges, Market Data, News, Reference Data, Trading Technology, , , , ,

February 10, 2012 • 9:54 am 0

Thomson Reuters Goes Live with Delta Data Factory

First Derivatives plc ,  is pleased to announce that Thomson Reuters (TR) pricing and reference data group (P&RDG) has selected and implemented FD’s Delta Data Factory (DDF) for use internally as a component in its multi-faceted forward-thinking data delivery strategy. This announcement follows FD’s recent launch of DDF, a hosted data factory service for reference data and also the formation of a dedicated data management division.

Thomson Reuters P&RDG client-centric focus and innovation approach makes use of Delta Data Factory as one element in a strategy to rapidly meet the formatting and workflow requirements of its clients. TR selected DDF as a managed service “data formatting factory” to assist in its strategy to offer TR clients speedy integration and adoption of reference and pricing data.

According to Tim Rice, MD of Global Pricing and Reference Data, “we selected FD’s Delta Data Factory because of the flexibility and rapid implementation speed, powerful data transformation engine, data knowledgeable team, reliable hosted infrastructure and global support model. Within TR’s data strategy, FD’s independence as a strong third party service provider supports and accelerates our plans allowing clients to leverage our data quickly. We’re now successfully live with a number of clients”.

For consumers of TR data, whether it be client-direct or third party application vendors, FD’s Delta Data Factory transforms the data into rapidly consumable formats for TR clients, third party applications partners, security master environments or EDM platform formats.

Dale Richards, President of FD US and Global Head of Data Management at FD commented, “We are very pleased to have TR as a client of DDF. The service is a powerful new model for the data industry and TR implementing and going live is a terrific endorsement of the capabilities”.

DDF is a managed service support model that includes software, expert data staff, support level management, infrastructure, customization tools, hosting and management. FD provides the factory working with clients to implement the best strategy. FD has been hosting and operating systems on behalf of clients for 15 years with ISO27001/SAS70 compliant operating centers.

In addition to data vendors and publishers, financial institutions use DDF to outsource the processing and normalization of multiple in-bound reference data sources into EDM or proprietary security master environments. FD’s also uses DDF to produce customized out-bound formats for their internal clients. Benefits include cost savings and decreased project timeframes.

Source: Bobsguide, 10.02.2012

Filed under: Corporate Action, Data Management, Data Vendor, Market Data, Reference Data, , , , , , ,

February 2, 2012 • 1:39 am 0

Bloomberg Opens its Data Distribution Technology

Open Market Data Initiative Will Spur Innovation & Industry Collaboration

Bloomberg is opening its market data interfaces for use by technology professionals globally, without cost or restriction, the company announced today. Bloomberg’s application programming interface, known as BLPAPI, is used daily by more than 100,000 professionals across the financial services industry and is now publicly available under a free-use license.

BLPAPI powers global market data distribution to desktops, workgroups and enterprise applications. In addition to Bloomberg Professional service subscribers, non-Bloomberg customers, vendors and software developers can now use BLPAPI as an alternative to proprietary technologies for market data distribution. This is Bloomberg’s latest move in support of its Open Market Data Initiative – an ongoing effort to embrace and promote open solutions for the financial services industry.

“Today’s global financial marketplace depends on the free flow of timely and accurate market information,” said Tom Secunda, Founding Partner and Global Head of Bloomberg’s Financial Products and Services division. “By embracing open technologies for market data distribution, we remove layers of expense, erase restrictive license agreements and enable innovation.”

“We intend to evolve BLPAPI into an open standard with the help of an independent committee charged with managing the future development and stability of a truly open market data interface,” said Shawn Edwards, Chief Technology Officer of Bloomberg LP. “Open technologies allow our customers, partners, and others to direct resources towards developing innovative services instead of coping with rigid technologies.”

Bloomberg’s open API follows the release of Bloomberg’s Open Symbology (BSYM), a system to identify securities across all global asset classes. BSYM is an alternative to proprietary security identifiers that has been adopted by leading global securities exchanges and financial services organizations.

The BLPAPI interface works with a comprehensive set of programming languages and operating systems, including Java, C, C++, .NET, COM and Perl. Other benefits of using Bloomberg’s API include:

• A comprehensive technical definition of a market data interface that includes publish/subscribe, request/response, all built on a flexible service-oriented design,

• An MIT-style license that allows users to copy and use BLPAPI interfaces for use with any market data service, applications or adapter technology,

• A simple and intuitive interface technology that is suitable for high volume and low latency applications.

* Bloomberg is offering its programming interface (BLPAPI) under a free-use agreement. This does not apply to any content.

Source:Bob´s Guide, 01.02.2012

Filed under: Data Management, Data Vendor, Market Data, , , , , , , , ,

February 1, 2012 • 11:32 am 0

A-TEAM launches Big Data 4 Finance

 A-Team Group launched today – BigDataForFinance.com where it will cover the emerging science of big data and how it relates to financial markets applications – such as analysis of time series pricing, management of reference data and determination of sentiment from news archives.  A-Team will also cover the evolving technology infrastructure that underpins big data applications, from storage to analytics and business intelligence.

A-TEAM: Let’s start by addressing a working definition for big data, as we see it.  Wikipedia has a pretty good starter: “Datasets that grow so large that they become awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools.”

But here’s our improvement on that: “Datasets whose characteristics – size, data type and frequency – are beyond efficient processing, storage and extraction by traditional database management tools.”

And let’s be clear, the focus is as much on the analysis of data to derive actionable business information as it is on handling different data types and high frequency updates.

Make sure that you don’t miss news and contributions that could be valuable.  Be sure to sign up for the weekly email update here.

Source: A-TEAM, 18.01.2012

Filed under: Data Management, Data Vendor, Market Data, Reference Data, Risk Management, , , , , , , , , ,

January 19, 2012 • 10:45 am 0

IDC White Paper: Solving Big Data’s Big Challenges Can Lead to Big Advantages

Solving Big Data’s Big Challenges Can Lead to Big Advantages

The volumes and complexity of market data required by financial institutions today are immense and growing rapidly. Ongoing market changes are accelerating the growth in demand for data, and forcing financial institutions to address the challenges of what has come to be known as “Big Data”. This demand is fueled as firms develop and deploy new, more sophisticated cross-asset investment strategies.

At the same time regulatory changes are also forcing firms to source and report increasingly larger amounts of trade data, as well as to adopt higher-quality – and usually data-hungry – risk and pricing models. Investors are making similar demands of their asset managers.

Interactive Data, the reference data powerhouse, has authored a new white paper which describes these challenges in depth. It also outlines the steps financial firms may need to take in order to address them effectively. Those that do could have a notable competitive advantage over their more slow-footed rivals.

Download your complimentary copy here.

Source: IDC, 18.01.2012

Filed under: Data Management, Data Vendor, Market Data, Reference Data, Risk Management, Trading Technology, , , , , , ,

January 10, 2012 • 12:10 pm 0

SunGard -10 Historical Market Data Trends for 2012

Oliver Muhr, senior vice president of SunGard’s MarketMap business unit, said, “Economists, equity, fixed income researchers and quant traders need historical data to better understand growth opportunities and validate market positions and trading strategy. This requires not only more data, but more minute and granular information provided in a fast and efficient manner. SunGard offers information management tools that help enterprises filter and deliver accurate data for price discovery, financial modeling, risk management and business intelligence.”

The ten market data trends SunGard has identified for 2012 in historical data management are:

Transparency (Transparency and Evaluation Prices White Paper):

1. Firms need more consistent and timely reporting to meet new regulations and investor demands, creating greater strain on data infrastructures that feed risk reporting
2. Risk reports will be required by regulators and investors almost daily, while on-demand data will be needed to meet more advanced analytics
3. Greater transparency in analyzing the relationships between asset classes, such as complex derivatives, is driving the need for standardized entity and security identifiers, and cross symbology

Efficiency:

4. Larger data sets are required to feed predictive models, as more historical data over longer time periods and increased granularity of data sets power back-tests, forecasts and trading impacts throughout the day
5. Firms are focused on controlling variable data costs by centralizing historical data in one location to assess best price
6. Practitioners such as MBAs and CFAs want more flexible data management solutions that require less IT support so that they can spend more time discovering market opportunities
7. With globalization of markets, historical data brings greater complexity in terms of cross-border currencies, valuations and accounting standards – requiring improved accuracy and more market data coverage across assets and regions

Networks:

8. In order to perform advanced analytics and calculations required to support electronic trading strategies, firms must implement platforms that can store greater quantities of data and quickly retrieve and accurately process historical and time series data.
9. Vector storage, rather than traditional relational databases, will be needed to understand complex trends and scenarios
10. Cleaning and storing historical data is driving firms to seek plug-and-play technology that fits with industry standard infrastructures

Paul Rowady, senior analyst at TABB Group, said, “Data management has been, and always will be, an among the most critical components of the quantitative process. It is well known in the quant world that the depth of historical archive – the timeframe of data used for backtesting – is inversely proportional to the turnover of the strategy in question. Therefore, today’s trend toward slower-turnover strategies means that a proportional increase in the scale of the data will be required, as well as the most granular data possible in order to provide maximum flexibility for strategy development today and down the road.  In fact, dealing with data at the granular level and in a hands-on environment is paradoxically the most valuable exercise a quant can do to understand subtle market inefficiencies.”

Source: SunGard, 09.01.2012

Filed under: Data Management, Data Vendor, Market Data, Reference Data, Risk Management, , , , , , ,

October 31, 2011 • 11:26 pm 1

NYSE Technologies Open Sources MAMA API to create vendor neutral OpenMAMA platform

Broadens Access and Increases Flexibility for All Users and Vendors  through New Standard for Global Capital Markets, Hosted at Linux Foundation

NYSE Technologies, the commercial technology unit of NYSE Euronext (NYX), today announced that it has open sourced its Middleware Agnostic Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAMASM), now called OpenMAMA. As a vendor neutral platform driven by the financial services technology community, OpenMAMA enables companies to protect their technology investments and help remove the friction in implementing new trading technology solutions across their technology operations utilizing a simple, consistent API.

Hosted by The Linux Foundation, OpenMAMA is supported by a steering committee of some of the most recognized names in financial services, including J.P. Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, EMC, Exegy and Fixnetix, among others. This newly open-sourced code establishes a new industry standard delivering greater flexibility and reduced development times with an underlying goal of lowering costs and building broader support for a range of interconnected programs. OpenMAMA offers a robust set of features with unmatched reliability and performance that ensure a uniform, future-proof middleware messaging solution for financial services firms. It is available through the Linux Foundation project today and the steering committee will announce new members and participants to the OpenMAMA initiative in the coming months.

“NYSE Technologies’ vision has always been to create a new breed of capital markets community that benefits from our extensive global network and utilizes the best, most innovative technologies from a range of service providers, not just ourselves,” said Stanley Young, CEO, NYSE Technologies. “Launching OpenMAMA through the Linux Foundation is another step toward achieving that goal. Through the industry steering committee, we are positioning ourselves alongside our peers and customers to become expert consultants for open sourced capital markets technology. We have created a vibrant customer community of over 150 market participants using MAMATM, and now with OpenMAMA, customers and firms everywhere will benefit from third-party contributors creating an even richer and more compelling API.”

Additionally, NYSE Technologies has worked with a diverse range of vendors and financial institutions at the forefront of technological innovation to create a steering group comprised of industry leaders building and utilizing financial technology applications. Collectively, the committee will determine OpenMAMA’s development roadmap, funding, strategy and product direction. As the OpenMAMA community grows, the steering committee composition could change to incorporate new members that join through the Linux Foundation.

Scott Parsons, CTO, Exegy added, “OpenMAMA is a very exciting chance for the industry to collaborate and architect the functionality and direction of a key piece of infrastructure. Using the MAMA API, we can now design a platform that strikes a unique balance of performance, interoperability and future proofing that has never been done before.”

“Fixnetix is pleased to join leading members of the global banking, hedge fund and proprietary trading community for the Linux Foundation steering committee on OpenMAMA,” says Anthony Kingsnorth, Director of Operations, Fixnetix. “We believe industry collaboration will only yield the best results and outcome for our universal trading, market data and risk control customer base.”

NYSE Technologies decision to open the MAMA platform creates an easily accessible architecture and proves its commitment to true strategic partnership with its customers. The benefits of the OpenMAMA platform are further strengthened by NYSE Technologies’ innovative plan to publish an industry-wide standardized data model. Furthermore, the OpenMAMA project will release the Middleware Agnostic Market Data API (MAMDA Aerly next year. MAMDA will provide users with the ability to publish and consume market data from multiple sources and vendors in a standardized format onto the open platform to help market participants better leverage technology assets and innovate more rapidly.

As market activity evolves and customer needs change, OpenMAMA will continue to be an open, flexible and efficient means of developing and deploying new, event-driven applications. The first release of OpenMAMA is available now with substantial updates expected through March 2012.

Source: Bobsguide, 31.10.2011

Filed under: Data Management, Data Vendor, Market Data, News, Standards, , , , , , ,

October 26, 2011 • 11:40 pm 0

Special Report: Evaluated Pricing Oct 2011 – A-TEAM

Valuations and pricing teams are facing a much higher degree of scrutiny from both the regulatory community and the investor community in the glare of the post-crisis data transparency spotlight. Fair value price transparency requirements and the gradual move towards a more harmonised accounting standards environment is set within the context of the whole debate about data quality across the financial services business, in light of incoming regulations such as Basel III and the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). Whether it is related to risk management, pricing, trading or reporting, firms need to be able to stand behind their numbers.

The goal of the AIFMD is to create a level playing field and set basic standards for the operation of alternative investment funds in Europe via new reporting and governance requirements. On the pricing and valuations side of things, firms must establish what the directive calls “appropriate and consistent” procedures to allow for the independent valuation of a fund’s assets. In order to achieve this, the valuation must either be performed by an independent third party or by the asset manager, as long as there is functional separation between the pricing and portfolio management functions.

Download free report here

Source: A-Team, 12.10.2011

Filed under: Data Management, Data Vendor, Market Data, Reference Data, Standards, , , , , , , , , , ,

September 14, 2011 • 12:06 am 2

10 Trading Trends in Latin America : SunGard

Raj Mahajan, president of SunGard’s global trading business, said: “The economy in Latin America continues to grow at an exceptional pace. Led by Brazil, which has achieved an annual average growth of 3.7% over the last ten years, (nearly twice that of the US), the boom includes Mexico, Chile, Columbia and Peru. SunGard is helping Latin American trading firms capitalize on the change and growth in that region, by providing low latency execution to help them compete in the global race for liquidity with greater transparency, efficiency and access to network connectivity.”

The ten trends SunGard has identified as shaping Latin American trading are:

1. Mexico, Chile, Columbia and Peru are quickly gaining recognition as key markets in Latin America, as their combined trading volumes edge closer to Brazilian levels.

2. Brazil’s markets are going completely electronic, increasing firms’ ability to more efficiently and more quickly access liquidity. As a result volumes have skyrocketed; a 400% increase in activity in the last decade.

3. Demand for international order flow is high as volumes are rising in emerging markets: Brazil is ranked the fourth largest emerging market according to a recent article.

4. The sell-side in Latin America is consolidating; large international players are buying local brokers to quickly increase their presence and credibility.

5. FIX connectivity is increasing: As firms receive and execute more order flow internationally, the adoption of FIX has taken hold in Latin America, helping to efficiently connect buy- and sell-side firms.

6. Trading volumes are increasing across the region and firms need real-time data and analytical tools for greater transparency into market movements. It is predicted that Brazil will see a 4.9% increase in equity market performance in 2011, according to a recent report. From 2006-2010, fund flows into Brazil have totaled $10 billion.

7. As more international investors want exposure to LatAm markets, the networks into and out of these markets becomes more important. Local firms and international players are investing in telecommunications infrastructure to ensure bandwidth and reliability for their trading networks.

8. With major exchanges allowing third party software firms direct access to exchanges, traders have more network connectivity options and can now take advantage of independent software vendors to provide their technology platforms.

9. As LatAm trading volumes skyrocket, the demand for financial information within the region is growing. In terms of financial market data and news, Latin America is second only to the Asian nations in allocating more budget for this resource.

10. LatAm trading firms are investing in low latency execution and stable customizable trading solutions, leaving legacy technologies behind for greater operating efficiency.

Danielle Tierney, junior analyst at Aite, said, “Networks are the key to sustaining growth in Latin America. Approximately 25 percent of the volume traded in Latin America is international, driving the search for new sources of liquidity and establishing connections to powerful global networks.”

Sourc: SunGard, 12.09.2011

Filed under: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Data Vendor, Exchanges, FIX Connectivity, Latin America, Market Data, Mexico, Peru, Trading Technology, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 53 other followers