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BI-SAM, a provider of data management, performance, attribution, risk, composites and reporting solutions for the global asset management industry, is expanding operations in London and moving to a new location.
BI-SAM’s B-One platform establishes a source of master data for producing time series performance returns and reports, delivers a comprehensive level of performance measurement and attribution analysis in terms of quality of output, content and timeliness, while offering customers maximum scalability.
“Since the start of 2013, we have seen an increase of 33 per cent in our UK customer base and we expect this trend to continue,” says
The decision for Société Générale to launch a dark pool trading platform, AlphaY, in April 2012 arose from a desire to access liquidity in a safe environment that the firm felt was not readily available externally.
Prior to launching AlphaY, SocGen’s analysis of dark pools led to it developing a series of measures to analyse liquidity toxicity. Each trading venue’s liquidity was profiled to create a liquidity spectrum ranging from safe to toxic. These measures convinced SocGen that there was a gap in the quality of dark pool liquidity and as Mark Goodman (pictured), head of quantitative electronic services, explains:
Under current MiFID regulation, pre-trade transparency waivers are used to allow non-displayed trading venues to forego the need to publish bids and offers prior to execution. With average trade size falling on these venues, often referred to as dark pools, there is a feeling among regulators and indeed exchanges, that these venues are having a negative impact on price discovery and liquidity.
The danger, however, of reneging or capping volumes traded under these waivers and applying potentially broad-based regulation under MiFIR, is that all dark venues will be treated the same. In reality, they differ widely in concept, market model,
By James Williams – Dark pools exist in a variety of forms to serve a variety of clients. In the US they are referred to as an alternative trading system (ATS). In Europe they include multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) – alternative trading venues that sprang out of MiFID regulation in 2007 – broker-owned pools called Broker Crossing Networks (BCNs) or “internalisers”. Not to mention independent dark pool operators like Liquidnet that connect buy-side to buy-side institutions.
The number of dark pool venues that now exist has risen considerably: it is estimated that there are some 45 such venues in the
AmBank Berhad, part of Malaysia’s AmBank Group, has gone live with the latest version of Murex’s MX.3 Market Risk Solution.
This new market risk implementation enables the bank to enhance oversight of its risk management activities across all fixed income businesses and strengthens the bank’s ability to meet increased domestic regulatory and reporting requirements.
“A thorough due diligence and proof of concept preceded our decision to shift away from our former system to Murex whose capabilities we were already familiar with. Besides the benefits of leveraging current installations, we wanted to make sure this new risk installation will
All seven of IndexIQ’s hedge fund and alternative beta replication indices saw negative performance in May.
Designed as investable benchmarks that replicate the performance characteristics of sophisticated hedge fund strategies, the IQ Hedge benchmark indexes underlie a variety of investment products globally including ETFs, mutual funds, and institutional accounts.
The IQ Hedge Emerging Markets Beta Index was the biggest loser last month, down 1.97 per cent, followed by IQ Hedge Market Neutral Beta Index (-1.38 per cent), IQ Hedge Composite Beta Index (-1.06 per cent), IQ Hedge Event-Driven Beta Index and IQ Hedge Global Macro Beta Index (both −1.04
KPMG, the US audit, tax and advisory firm, is adding more depth to its alternative investments practice by hiring Constance Hunter, an economic thought leader and former portfolio manager, as its chief economist, alternative investments.
In this newly created position, Hunter (pictured), who is based in New York, will work with the firm’s global alternative investments leadership team to play a key role in economic forecasting, planning and strategy, and client relationship development.
"Many financial services companies are struggling to understand the impact that current economic and geo-political developments will have on their businesses and their customers," says
Gravitas, a co-sourcing platform providing cloud technology, collaborative outsourcing, risk analytics and research support to the alternative investment industry, has chosen the IBM Risk Analytics engine to provide Risk-as-a-Service for emerging and mid-sized hedge funds.
As part of its Risk Reporting Plus and Risk Co-Sourcing services, Gravitas risk analysts will use IBM’s risk technology to offer advanced analytics, modelling and custom reporting to help hedge funds meet regulatory requirements, support better investment decisions, and assist with the mitigation of unintended sector-industry concentration and secondary risks at both the fund and enterprise level.
Through Gravitas’s risk service, hedge funds can
Hedge funds were up 0.7 per cent for May and 4.6 per cent year-to-date, as measured by the HFRX Global Hedge Fund index.
Anthony Lawler, portfolio manager at GAM, says: “April was a tough month for bond holders with the Barclays Global Aggregate Bond index down 3.0 per cent for the month and 3.7 per cent for the year. This generated concern for the average traditional or balanced portfolio that is not getting the yield nor the capital protection expected from bond allocations.”
On hedge fund strategy and trade performance, Lawler says: “It was a positive month for equity
MarketAxess has reported total monthly trading volume for May 2013 of USD62.5bn on its electronic trading platform.
The total consists of USD39.0bn in US high-grade volume, USD15.8bn in other credit volume, and USD7.7bn in liquid products volume.
Monthly volume updates are posted in the Investor Relations section of the MarketAxess website on or before the tenth business day of each month. The data provide current month and historical volume totals on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis.
