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Final Thoughts on Sifma, Past and Present
The first SIA (now Sifma) show I attended was in 1986. In some ways, it was quite different to the event last week, while in other ways it was pretty much the same. Entering the main show floor in 1986, one would be confronted by the big Quotron booth, with sales head George Levine in…
Sifma Rocked!
I’m referring to last week’s Sifma Technology Management Conference and Exhibit in NYC. True, the new name (the result of the SIA’s merger with the Bond Association) was a bit of a put off – many people suggested that Sifma sounded like some horrible strain of bird flu – but otherwise it’s been the best…
Life In The Fast Lane
I’m writing this posting from Montreal, Canada, where I just watched a thrilling Formula 1 grand prix, won by British rookie Lewis Hamilton. An amazing achievement in only his sixth F1 race. So what has F1 got to do with low latency? Well, for one, F1 laps are timed down to the millisecond, just as…
Perplexed By Percentages
A couple of weeks ago, together with Reuters, we conducted a survey of the marketplace to find out how well latency measurement is entrenched, and what users thought of datafeed providers and measurement tool vendors. And we asked them to comment on their current market data handling infrastructures too. One figure that came back –…
Asset Control Appoints Misys’ Bennfors CFO; IBM’s Katsoff Head of Services
Asset Control has appointed two new executives to its senior management team. Peter Bennfors joins the company from his role as operations director with the treasury and capital markets group at Misys as chief financial officer, and Rich Katsoff joins from IBM, where he was associate partner within the business consulting/financial markets group, in a…
Siperian Expands Team with Four Key Hires
Siperian, developer of a master data management (MDM) platform, has appointed four people to its executive team in response to the company’s growth and expansion into new markets. Joining Siperian are Dr Jeff Sidell in the newly created position of chief scientist; Sean Ward as vice president, worldwide sales; Tony Spensieri as vice president, financial…
Reuters Testing Equity Derivatives Pricing Capability, Will Make Prices Available to All Clients in Q3
In a bid to keep up with customer requirements for prices across a broader range of instrument types, Reuters is currently testing a capability to price equity derivatives, with a view to making equity derivatives prices available to all clients in the third quarter. Increasingly, consumers of evaluations have a growing abundance of sources to…
With Derivatives Value Set to Break $500 Trillion Next Year, Cutting Valuations Risk is a Must, Says Celent
Analyst Celent has responded to the buzz around valuations for OTC derivatives and structured products with a report released this month in which it compares risk and pricing analytics solutions to support financial engineering and valuation functions. To put the importance of these solutions in context, Celent predicts that the combined notional value for all…
Interactive Data Adds Independent Valuations of Interest Rate Swaps Based on ICAP Benchmark Curves
Interactive Data Corporation’s Pricing and Reference Data business has introduced a service that will automate the delivery of independent valuations of interest rate swaps based on benchmark curves from ICAP, and trade details input by customers. Ian Blance, vice president, capital markets, Interactive Data (Europe), says this development has been driven by client demand. “Since…
Help Out There for Asset Managers Struggling to Price OTC Derivatives, But Outsourcing No Silver Bullet
One of the many operational challenges faced by fund managers as they invest more in OTC derivatives is accurately valuing portfolios containing hard to price instruments, but the good news is that “there’s a lot of experience out there” for firms to tap into, delegates at the recent Optimising OTC Derivative Operations in Fund Management…