Solutions
Misys and D+H have joined forces to create a diversified global financial software provider which will operate under the new company name Finastra.
The combination will create the third largest financial services technology company in the world, with approximately 10,000 employees and over 9,000 customers across 130 countries, including 48 of the top 50 banks globally. This follows the acquisition of D+H by Vista Equity Partners, which already owns Misys, creating a merger of two highly complementary financial technology providers.
Finastra will be led by Nadeem Syed in the role of Chief Executive Officer. Syed was previously CEO of
FinTech company Red Deer and TheySay, a text analytics company created by computational linguists from the University of Oxford specialising in sentiment analysis and emotional AI, are to collaborate on deep text analytics to automatically connect, contextualise and analyse research, market, alternative and social data to facilitate better investment decision-making for active investment managers.
The recent exponential growth in Big Data has meant the investment community has been struggling to keep up with a rapidly expanding data universe, making the task of filtering data in real-time and converting it into tradable insight increasingly challenging. Attempts to address these big data
Coinsilium Group Limited, an accelerator that finances and manages the development of early-stage blockchain technology companies, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with HyperChain Capital a hedge fund focused on investing in Blockchain companies.
Under the terms of the MoU, the firms will collaborate and finance co-investment opportunities in blockchain companies.
Investments in Blockchain companies via ICOs have surpassed VC investments in 2017.
HyperChain, led by Stelian Balta, is one of the world’s first large hedge funds investing in blockchain companies and new blockchain protocols via the acquisition of newly issued crypto and application-specific tokens (‘Tokens’).
Euroclear is partnering with Quantessence, a UK-based financial technology company delivering an open architecture platform that manages the running of predefined asset allocation algorithms. The first application on the platform will offer a service for iCPPI products.
iCPPI is a risk management strategy that runs pre-agreed asset allocation algorithms to provide capital protection to an individual’s fund portfolio.
The service will connect distributors, asset managers and hedge providers (investment banks and re-insurers) on the Euroclear Quantessence platform to automate the running of these algorithms.
By combining Quantessence’s market expertise and Euroclear’s strength of running and managing market infrastructure solutions, this
Investment research platform ResearchPool has launched an MiFID II solution for investment firms to manage budget, spending, consume and evaluate research, named Tool for Research Usage and Evaluation (TRUE).
TRUE aims to enable investment firms to easily manage and control research spending and usage by investment strategy, portfolio/portfolio manager and provider/analyst.
Compliant with MiFID II obligations, TRUE provides a single point to manage budgets and spending funded by P&L and/or Research Payment Accounts (RPAs), and includes pre-funded accounts for flexibility. Additionally, functionality provides tracking for research spending, usage and ratings purchased through the ResearchPool marketplace, as well as research contracted directly
Broadridge Financial Solutions is to add MSCI ESG Research’s ESG Fund Metrics to its Global Market Intelligence, a platform for domestic and cross-border fund data and analytics.
Under the agreement, key MSCI ESG Fund Metrics will be available on the platform to provide an increased level of transparency on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) quality and characteristics of over 26,000 mutual funds and ETFs covered by MSCI ESG Research.
Global Market Intelligence, which provides detailed information on 80,000 mutual funds and ETFs globally, will incorporate the ESG quality scores, sustainable impact, carbon intensity metric and value alignment scores
State Street Corporation has received approval from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to operate its FX Connect and Currenex platforms as multi-lateral trading facilities (MTFs) for foreign exchange within the jurisdiction of MiFID II.
Both platforms will now operate as MTFs and be upgraded to be compliant with MIFID II upon implementation in January 2018.
For institutions that fall under the MiFID II regime, “financial instruments”1 can only be traded on the new MTFs; however, the operators of Currenex and FX Connect located outside of MIFID II’s jurisdiction (Currenex Inc and FX Connect LLC respectively) will not be
LiquidityBook has appointed Nicholas Thompson (pictured), as Manager, Client Services – EMEA, on the back of increased demand for the POEMS (portfolio, order and execution management system) platform from European fund managers.
Thompson (pictured) will be responsible for leading the firm’s London team and overseeing all service and deployment aspects for its expanding client base in the region. The appointment comes just a month after LiquidityBook tapped Les Vital to lead its Technical Sales team.
Thompson joins from Eze Software Group, where he was Senior Client Engagement Manager for EMEA and was responsible for product implementation across the region.
Hedgeweek Q&A with Mark Coriaty, Chief Strategy Officer, Eze Castle Integration
HW: Talk about the advancement and evolution of cloud services in recent years and how we’ve ended up where we are.
MC: If you step back and look at the landscape over the last four or five years, we have seen a lot of changes both on the technology front, as well as within the financial markets. Whether the result of fund raising challenges or increasing regulatory demands, the landscape for alternative fund managers has changed significantly.
We’ve therefore had to adapt to the market and this includes three
Rates of funds processing automation by transfer agents (TAs) in the cross-border fund centres of Luxembourg and Ireland reached new highs in 2016, according to a new report published by The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) in cooperation with SWIFT.
The report is an on-going campaign by EFAMA and SWIFT to highlight the advancement of automation and standardisation rates of orders of cross-border funds. Twenty nine TAs from Ireland and Luxembourg participated in this survey.
The report reveals that the total volume processed by the 29 survey participants reached 34 million orders last year, while the total
