A-Team Insight Brief
Investment Manager River Global Implements Bloomberg Solutions for New Tech Stack
A win for Bloomberg with UK-based investment manager River Global implementing a suite of the company’s solutions as its new tech-stack to support front-to-back office investment workflows. Solutions adopted by the investment manager include Bloomberg AIM for order and investment management and BQuant Enterprise for quantitative analysis.
“By adopting Bloomberg’s integrated offerings, we have seamless connectivity in our workflow, ensuring efficiency and accuracy across our front, middle and back-office operations,” says Phil Jones, product and operations director at River Global. “Bloomberg is our vendor of choice for our investment tech stack and we look forward to continuing our work together as we optimise strategies and scale the business.”
CUSIP Global Services Adds AI Search Functionality to CGS CUSIP Access
CUSIP Global Services (CGS) has added AI-powered search functionality to CGS CUSIP Access allowing users to perform advanced searches using plain text and eliminating the need to enter values into separate boxes in an advanced search window. The AI search tool uses a large language model (LLM), the GPT-4 model provided by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, to accurately extract the name and value of a search field from a user-entered search prompt in natural language. It then translates the prompt into a valid structured query, which is executed by the system to retrieve precise search results.
The AI search tool has also been incorporated into the Excel ADD-IN, allowing Excel ADD-IN users to search either by identifiers or by using the AI search tool and get return data in an excel workbook.
Snowflake Expands Toronto Office to Support Growth in Canadian Market
Snowflake has expanded and relocated its Toronto office to support strategic growth in the Canadian market and growing headcount. Located in the city’s business and technology core, the new Toronto office will serve as the company’s Canadian headquarters. Snowflake first opened in Canada in 2022, making Toronto home to one of the company’s five global Snowflake Engineering Hubs.
As part of the company’s growth strategy, Snowflake Canada is on track to double its team in 2024 and further build out its Canadian presence. The Toronto office is continuing to hire for positions across engineering, sales, and more as the organisation scales to meet increasing demand from customers.
Imandra Launces AI-Powered FIX Wizard
Imandra, the automated reasoning technology company, has launched FIX Wizard, an AI assistant for uts FIX Connectivity suite aimed at banks and trading entities. Based on Imandra’s neuro-symbolic architecture, FIX Wizard automates the analysis of financial protocols and APIs, to streamline client onboarding in capital markets. The new tool integrates statistical AI with Imandra’s proprietary automated reasoning, offering a Generative AI assistant that ensures compliance with regulatory demands through verifiable audit trails.
The FIX Wizard uses Imandra’s “digital twin” of a FIX gateway, creating a full logical model of the API to provide comprehensive diagnostics and recommendations across various trading systems. It is designed to address the intricacies of FIX specifications, helping to decode and troubleshoot client data, manage engagement rules, and conduct conformance testing efficiently.
Appital Launches ‘Trending Equities’ to Enhance Liquidity Sourcing for Asset Managers
Appital, the price discovery and liquidity sourcing technology vendor, has introduced a new feature within its Appital Insights platform aimed at revolutionising liquidity sourcing in the asset management sector. ‘Appital Trending Equities’ enables deal originators on the buyside to proactively create and expose potential liquidity opportunities in relevant equities before officially launching a deal. This facilitates a more strategic approach to bookbuilding by allowing trading desks and portfolio managers to generate market orders in anticipation of future deals.
Asset managers on the Appital platform are already actively using the new feature, which has so far enabled opportunistic portfolio management teams to discover around 50 trading indications, collectively representing over $1 billion in potential liquidity.
Athena Integrates BTON Financial’s AI Trader Co-Pilot
Athena, part of United Fintech, and BTON Financial have announced a strategic integration, incorporating BTON’s AI-powered Trader Co-Pilot into Athena’s Order Management System/Portfolio Management System (OMS/PMS). The integration aims to transform trading decision-making across various financial sectors, including institutional asset managers, hedge funds, banks, and family offices. The development facilitates a more streamlined and efficient process, allowing traders to set order parameters and utilise advanced algorithms with a single click.
The collaboration between Athena and BTON Financial is designed to offer a seamless, scalable solution that leverages artificial intelligence and data-driven trading tools to optimise trading strategies without the need for extensive setup or training.
Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management Adopts DTCC’s ITP Services to Support U.S. T+1 Settlement Transition
DTCC has announced that Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management is utilising its Institutional Trade Processing (ITP) services to enhance trade processing efficiency ahead of the U.S. financial market’s transition to a T+1 settlement cycle on May 28, 2024. The suite includes DTCC’s CTM for central matching, M2i workflow, TradeSuite ID, ALERT, and Settlement Instruction Manager, aiming to fully automate post-trade processes and achieve same-day affirmation (SDA) for APAC region cross-border transactions.
By automating allocation, confirmation, and affirmation, CTM’s M2i workflow and associated services facilitate direct, automated trade affirmations and instruction deliveries for settlement via the U.S. depository, significantly streamlining the management and finality of trade lifecycles. This strategic implementation by Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management is designed to enhance transaction efficiency and support the broader industry goals of reduced settlement times.
McKay Brothers International Launches Ultra-Low Latency Bandwidth Service Between London and Stockholm
McKay Brothers International (MBI), the low-latency networking specialist, has unveiled a new bandwidth service providing the lowest latency connection between London’s LD4 data centre and Stockholm’s Stack STO01 data centre. The hybrid wireless-fibre route claims to achieve data transmission speeds that are hundreds of microseconds quicker than existing services, enhancing connectivity for major trading platforms like Cboe Europe in London and Nasdaq-OMX in Stockholm.
MBI, known for its extensive European ultra-low latency wireless network, connects key financial centres across the continent, including Frankfurt, Bergamo, and Madrid, and offers specialised market data services from exchanges such as Eurex and CME. This strategic expansion aims to support high-frequency trading firms, banks, and hedge funds with faster and more reliable data exchange capabilities.
Adaptive Financial Consulting Partners with KCx to Launch New Event-Driven Trading System
Adaptive Financial Consulting (Adaptive) has entered into a strategic partnership with Kepler Cheuvreux’s execution division, KCx, to develop an advanced event-driven trading system utilising Adaptive’s Hydra technology and Aeron, its cloud-native messaging infrastructure for capital markets. The new system aims to enhance KCx’s equities execution platform by integrating a sequencer-based architecture that improves algorithmic trading and simplifies client interactions through a unified interface.
The initiative, marking the first phase of a broader innovation strategy, is designed to boost the firm’s market presence by offering scalable and sophisticated trading solutions across different asset classes. The technology, supporting on-premise and potential future cloud-based operations via AWS, also allows for remote functional testing to meet client performance expectations at launch.
R3 and Quant Selected to Develop Prototype for UK’s Regulated Liability Network
R3 and Quant have been chosen to create the technology prototype for the UK’s Regulated Liability Network (RLN) experimentation phase, an initiative led by UK Finance and supported by EY. This project aims to establish a unified platform facilitating various financial transactions using tokenised and traditional commercial bank deposits. The RLN will serve as a central innovation hub for digital transactions, with confirmed participants including Barclays, HSBC, Citi and Visa, among others. R3 will leverage its Corda platform for shared ledger capabilities, while Quant will enhance money interoperability through its Overledger platform.
The collaboration underscores the strategic aims of R3 and Quant in addressing the complexities of regulated financial environments through advanced ledger and API technologies. The prototype will explore multiple use cases across retail and wholesale payments, including ecommerce and bond issuance, supported by technology partners such as DXC Technology and Coadjute.