French investment firm Octo Finances has chosen Pricing Partners’ OTC derivatives valuations service, Price-it, to provide it with independent valuation for callable euro medium term notes (EMTNs) on Dow Jones’ Eurostoxx index. According to Maurice de Boisséson, head of research for Octo Finances, the firm selected the solution to provide greater transparency to its clients around complex instrument valuations.
“We were looking for a fast and reliable source of independent valuations for some of our OTC products. We found out in Price-it online a product that offers accurate fair prices with models managing the same level of innovation and complexity as investment banks,” he explains. The deciding factor for the firm was the range of coverage of the solution, which includes equity, credit, inflation and interest rates derivatives, adds de Boisséson.
Octo Finances is an investment company that specialises in intermediation on the fixed income, convertible bonds and structured products markets and has been approved by the Bank of France and the French financial markets authority (AMF).
Pricing Partners has experienced a productive start to 2009, with client wins including AXA Hedging Services and the Belgium Debt Agency and the launch of a source code version of its flagship Price-it solution. The vendor attributes its recent client wins to the current focus in the market on transparency in the valuations space, especially with regards to complex instruments. “Investors are quite lost with the recent market turmoil,” explains Eric Benhamou, CEO of the vendor. “They need some relevant numbers to make up their investment decision.”
