State Street has acquired Complementa Investment-Controlling AG, a Swiss supplier of investment performance measurement and analytics services.
Complementa, based in St. Gallen, Switzerland, helps institutions consolidate and measure performance of assets. The firm provides services to asset managers, banks, pension funds, family offices, insurance companies, foundations and trustees, primarily in Switzerland and Germany.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
The acquisition also includes wholly owned subsidiary Allocare AG, a provider of asset management software. Complementa's HedgeAnalytics business is excluded from the transaction.
Benjamin Brandenberger, founder and chairman of Complementa, and Michael Brandenberger, CEO and president of Complementa, will serve as board members. Andreas Joost, a member of the board, will take over as chief executive.
Complementa will be a wholly owned subsidiary of State Street and will retain its name and identity.
Northern Trust Enhances
Asset Risk Reporting
Northern Trust has enhanced asset and liability risk reporting to help clients monitor market risk more closely and meet regulatory requirements. The reporting uses multiple risk models to deliver scenario and factor stress-testing data.
"Pension funds across the globe are facing a raft of new regulations, which has resulted in an increasing demand for greater transparency, accuracy and a deeper level of analytics in risk reporting," said Ian Castledine, global head of investment risk and compliance product for Northern Trust.
Variable Proxy Fees Save
42% of Costs: TA Group
Publicly traded companies that use a competitive proxy pricing system rather than a fixed fee schedule established by regulators save 42% of the cost of distributing annual meeting materials, an association of transfer agents representing more than 12,000 U.S. public companies found.
The survey, by the Securities Transfer Association, evaluated 20 invoices sent to public companies by Broadridge Financial Solutions, which uses a regulatory fee structure approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
STA sent those invoices to its largest transfer agent members and asked them to provide similar price quotes. STA members quoted prices ranging from 13% to 80% less.
The SEC is currently reviewing the U.S. proxy processing system and is considering a regulatory change to permit competitive pricing for proxy services provided to investors who purchase shares through brokers and banks.
E-Trading of Interest Rate
Derivatives Surges 90%
Electronic trading of interest rate derivatives surged 90% in the third quarter over the third quarter of 2010, Tradeweb Markets said. The over-the-counter, multi-asset class online marketplace attributed the enormous increase to pending U.S. and European regulation, as well as larger trading volumes amid more market volatility.
"Regulation is accelerating the transition of derivatives trading to more efficient markets," said Lee Olesky, CEO of Tradeweb. "Market participants are starting to take the steps needed to comply with the underlying principles of market reform, even when faced with uncertain timing for implementation."
Order Machine to Take
QuantHouse Data Feeds
A new Netherlands-based supplier of smart order routers will be using QuantHouse feeds of market data.
The Order Machine's smart order router for equities trading across European exchanges will use QuantHouse supply of real-time feeds of derivatives market data from the European trading venues.
Its order-routing algorithm searches in real-time for the best conditions on different exchanges. It then routes the order to the exchange that offers the best results, for a bank or broker.
Butterfield Expands Fund
Services to Luxembourg
Butterfield Fulcrum will work with Luxembourg Investment Solutions to offer fund administration services in Luxembourg. The partners will serve everything from mutual funds to UCITS funds.
HSBC Adapts Software
For Corporate Treasurers
The global treasury management market, in which banks help corporate clients with cash management, trade finance and global payments, is huge but lacks good self-service tools and automated processing. U.S. Bank estimates the international corporate payments market totals about $67 trillion in yearly payables.
More than half of the those payments still come via paper check, according to Forrester Research. This leaves a wide open opportunity among large financial competitors such as Visa and U.S. Bank's Syncada payments network, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and others to provide advanced treasury technology to corporate CFOs and treasury departments.
HSBC, which is cutting back in other areas of the institution, is expanding its treasury management technology capabilities in a variety of ways via a partnership with SWIFT and SAP. The three organizations have finished work on a new product that expands HSBC Connect, the bank's corporate-to-bank integration and treasury solution.
The new offering caters to HSBC corporate customers that use SAP's enterprise resource planning software. The solution connects to a couple of SAP products: SAP Bank Communication Management, a payments tracking application; and SAP NetWeaver platform, SAP's overall application environment.
The new software automates manual processes and is aimed at providing better and more timely visibility over cash positions.
Goff Joins Morningstar as
Chief Technology Officer
Morningstar has hired Greg Goff as chief technology officer, responsible for the firm's global technology strategy and reporting to Chairman and CEO Joe Mansueto.
Goff was previously at The Nielsen Company, where he was senior vice president of global platform technology for the past two years. He joined the company in 2004 as vice president of data warehousing. He also worked for Accenture and BlueMeteor.
"Greg has a thorough understanding of new technologies along with experience managing large data sets and integrating diverse platforms," Mansueto said. "Technology is one of Morningstar's three core skills, along with research and design, and we're pleased to bring Greg on board to oversee our application development and global infrastructure."
CBOE Adds Slice of
U.S. Stock Market
CBOE Stock Exchange has agreed to acquire the National Stock Exchange, an all-electronic stock exchange now based in Jersey City, N.J.
The move will put two similarly sized electronic exchanges under one roof. CBOE Stock Exchange handles roughly 35.3 million shares a day, by last reported count; NSX handled 42.6 million shares on Thursday, September 29.
CBSX is trying to "expand its footprint in the securities exchange space by wholly owning and operating a second exchange,'' the company said in its announcement of the agreement.
The NSX will be operated as a separate exchange. The acquisition is expected to be completed by year's end.
ConvergEx to Help Launch
Alternative Mutual Funds
ConvergEx Group has launched a new division dedicated to the formation, performance and management of alternative mutual funds.
The new Alternative Mutual Fund Services division will be run by its NorthPoint prime services business and will work with traditional mutual funds and hedge funds that are interested in launching alternative mutual funds.
"Today, alternative mutual funds represent less than 1% of the $12 trillion mutual fund market," said Doug Nelson, chief executive officer of ConvergEx's NorthPoint business. "Since we began offering select services to launch alternative mutual funds back in May, we have seen a significant uptick in demand. We believe that trend will continue and our expectation is that alternative mutual funds will reach over 5% of the market within the next 10 years."
Jay Jacobs, a partner at Merlin Securities, has been hired to head this new division.
Jacobs "has firsthand experience in every aspect of managing and operating alternative mutual funds, from creating a fund to fund distribution-all of which can be tremendously helpful in helping funds raise assets," Nelson said.
NorthPoint uses technology to provide prime services such as custody, execution, analytics and reporting. The business also provides capital introduction, research, commission management and startup services.
Bloomberg Readies its
Swap Execution Facility
Bloomberg Fixed Income Trading is trying to keep one step ahead of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
It has launched ALLQ Derivatives as a trading platform for over-the-counter (OTC) swap trading. The new platform lets buy-side investors review indicative prices and execute interest rate and credit default swap deals directly with dealers on the Bloomberg Professional Service.
The initiative marks Bloomberg's development of a swaps execution facility (SEF) to meet the requirements of the U.S. financial reform legislation, which will require financial firms to trade many swap contracts on registered swap execution facilities. Under the Dodd-Frank measure, the Securities and Exchange Commission will be responsible for regulating swaps based on single-name products while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will be responsible for regulating swaps on index products.
Among the dealers who have committed to trading ALLQ IRS, are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Société Générale and UBS. Bloomberg is joining a growing cottage industry of trading platforms and broker-dealers which could serve as SEFs once the SEC and CFTC issue their final rules of operation; those include Tradebook and Market Axess. MME
