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McKay Brothers International’s (MBI) Central London POP, adjacent to the London Stock Exchange, is now live, completing MBI’s UK Local millimeter wave network.
MBI connects data centres serving major UK equities, interest rate and FX matching engines at the lowest known latency. For example, latency from Slough-LD4 to a MBI’s Central London POP is 272 microseconds round trip. Slough-LD4 to Interxion’s Central London location is covered in 280 microseconds round trip.
“McKay offers the lowest known latency for each leg of the UK equities trade,” says MBI’s managing director Francois Tyc. “We are the only provider able to meet
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has voted unanimously to approve two proposals for amendments to existing regulations addressing cybersecurity testing and safeguards for the automated systems used by critical infrastructures the CFTC regulates.
The proposals will be open for public comment during a 60-day comment period after their publication in the Federal Register.
The proposals, to be published in separate Federal Register Notices, identify five types of cybersecurity testing as essential to a sound system safeguards program: (1) vulnerability testing, (2) penetration testing, (3) controls testing, (4) security incident response plan testing, and (5) enterprise technology risk
MPMF Fund Management (Ireland) Limited (MPMF), the Maples group’s alternative investment fund manager (AIFM), has been authorised as a UCITS management company by the Central Bank of Ireland.
“The UCITS management company authorisation will allow MPMF to gain investment momentum and ensure that managers have the resources and support they need to meet the risk and reporting requirements of UCITS funds,” says Scott Somerville (pictured), Chief Executive Officer at MaplesFS.
MPMF provides AIFM and UCITS management company solutions via both a fully hosted/outsourced solution as well as a delegation solution. Both models provide local management and fulfilment of all
Big changes are afoot across a broad spectrum of the financial services industry. For example, in the wealth management and investment advisory space, thanks to huge technological developments in recent years, traditional wealth managers have a new competitor to face; the robo adviser, which sounds exciting but it is less the Terminator and more machine learning software, using algorithms to learn investor behaviour and automatically invest into portfolios based on clients' goals and risk threshold.
Such is the rise of the robo adviser, which includes Betterment and Wealthfront, Nutmeg, Money on Toast (!), not to mention Vanguard and Fidelity, that
Strategic advisory and consulting firm Berkeley Research Group has appointed Michael Athanason as a managing director. Athanason joins the BRG Capstone group in New York where he will lead the Private Funds Group Valuation Team.
Athanason brings over 25 years of valuation and corporate finance advisory experience and has been involved in the valuation of alternative investment portfolios for the past 10 years. He joins BRG from KPMG, where he was the US national leader of the Alternative Investments Valuation practice, and he was previously the global leader of Duff & Phelps’ Alternative Investment Valuation Services business.
Athanason specialises
MUFG Investor Services, the global asset servicing arm of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, has appointed John Sergides as Managing Director, Global Head, Business Development & Marketing. 


The appointment, which reinforces MUFG’s commitment to the asset servicing sector, is effective from 14 December 2015 and coincides with the completion of MUFG Investor Services’ acquisition of UBS Asset Management's Alternative Fund Services (AFS) business. 

Sergides will be responsible for driving MUFG Investor Services’ asset servicing solutions. These include fund administration, middle-office outsourcing, custody, depository, trustee, fund of hedge fund financing, FX and wider banking services to new clients, as well as deepening
Hong Kong-based macro-economic hedge fund Guard Capital is now using TFG Financial System cloud-based, cross-asset technology solution for its multi-asset portfolio and risk management requirements.
Guard Capital, which was founded by Leland Lim and Allan Bedwick, is drawing on TFG’s trade capture and risk management capabilities to support its real-time approach to financial markets. Guard pursues macro-economic themes, making use of highly liquid instruments to maximise investor returns using emerging market currencies, interest rates and other markets.
Guard says it chose TFG because of its focus on multi-asset product support, including real time risk reporting and stress testing features,
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved the Final Rule on Margin Requirements for Uncleared Swaps for Swap Dealers and Major Swap Participants. The Commission voted 2 in favour and 1 opposed.
The new regulation addresses margin requirements for uncleared swaps entered into by swap dealers (SDs) or major swap participants (MSPs) that are not subject to regulation by the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Farm Credit Administration or the Federal Housing Finance Agency (CSEs).
The Commission’s margin requirements will protect the safety and soundness
HazelTree and Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) have formed a strategic partnership to assist hedge funds, fund administrators, managed account providers and family offices in improving their cash management.
The partnership is in response to the changing regulatory environment for systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), particularly Basel III guidelines on capital requirements and balance sheet composition.
“Because of these new requirements, banks’ desire to accept or retain short-term cash deposits on their balance sheets has become challenging for SIFIs, and many institutional investors may not be able to keep cash balances on deposit in the same way they have
Automation lies at the heart of Interactive Brokers' prime brokerage model. Be it for risk management, account management, trade execution and pricing, everything is streamlined so as to provide fund managers with a cost-efficient solution.
Interactive Brokers can be viewed as a technology company that operates in the PB marketplace. At a time when bank-owned primes are overhauling their legacy IT systems to bring them into the 21st Century, the ability to remain nimble and technologically lean is working in the favour of non-banking primes like Interactive Brokers.
"We are constantly updating our systems for the future. I would say
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