Russell/Mellon has become the second subsidiary of Mellon Financial Corp. to purchase data management product Cadis from Citadel Associates. Cadis is being used across the range of index data services and performance measurement solutions at Russell/Mellon.
The data management product is helping to streamline data operations internally, and will also become a component of Russell/Mellon’s services to its clients. This deal follows a deal late last year with Mellon’s asset management subsidiary Newton Investment Management, where Cadis is used as the underlying data management layer for its investment management system.
According to Mick Brant, CEO of Russell/Mellon Europe, “The Cadis toolset will allow Russell/Mellon to dramatically speed up the implementation of our performance and attribution solutions, as well as allow us to deal with our internal data processing requirements in a much more efficient manner.”
Specifically, Cadis is being used at the Index Data Services group to manage and streamline the collation, cleansing and dissemination of index data, from standard FTSE & MSCI data to complex fixed income index data from specialist suppliers such as Citigroup. Cadis’ interfaces to software systems are also being used to integrate the data into order management systems, compliance, modelling, risk and P&L attribution systems.
The data management product is also being used to handle the sourcing and loading of customer data into Russell/Mellon’s performance measurement implementation teams.
Additionally, Cadis is supporting Russell/Mellon’s clients to move from monthly to daily performance data production, in light of the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) regulatory requirements for more frequent performance data.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but it is understood that Russell/Mellon will pay a license fee for its internal use of Cadis, plus a per-client fee for its clients who benefit from the data management services.
Citadel, a relative newcomer to the data management space, focuses mainly on the buy-side segment of the industry. Although founded five years ago in Luton, U.K. as a bespoke financial technology consultancy, it productized its offerings two years ago. The company is now building up its sales and marketing team to leverage what it sees as an opportunity for a different approach to data management.
Stuart Plane, director of sales and marketing at Citadel, says, “The need to rapidly and accurately process and distribute data across systems is a key factor in any data management solution. We believe that data processing must be separated from data storage to facilitate faster processing, particularly as volumes continue to increase, thus making our data management solution uniquely powerful. Citadel is about creating, process and moving data efficiently and accurately.”
Citadel’s strategy is two-fold. The deal with Russell/Mellon is part of Citadel’s new ‘Powered by Cadis’ strategy to white-label its data management technology for use by software providers. This enables the software companies to essentially outsource the data sourcing, validation, exceptions management, and distribution of data for use within their applications.
Its other approach is to compete in the enterprise-wide data management software space, occupied by the likes of Asset Control, Goldensource or Cicada. Its Data Management Platform provides a component-based to creating multiple golden copies for specialist business users, trading, modelling and compliance systems. According to Plane, Cadis’s sophisti-cated front-end that enables non-technologists to work with the system.
Citadel last year secured U.K. asset management firm Insight Investment to use the data management infrastructure to underpin Insight’s growing derivatives operations (see Reference Data Review, August 2004).
Subscribe to our newsletter
