Technology & Finance

Capital Markets - Equities, Fixed Income, Derivatives

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Mantara Offers Variable Cost Structure for High-Freq Trading

Mantara, a provider of advanced technology solutions for high-frequency trading, has launched a new trading entity, MantaraX, which allows sponsoring broker-dealer clients to apply variable costs to their trading technology based on the volume of commission dollars generated from trade executions generated through Mantara’s expressWay. The company has received broker-dealer registration approval from FINRA for the new entity. 

MantaraX was established as a ‘non-executing’ broker-dealer to provide Mantara’s sponsoring broker-dealer clients with a technology business model that directly supports tighter alignment of trade execution costs and associated revenue streams.  It reduces the broker-dealer’s exposure to fixed upfront expenditures and monthly fees that may not be supported by commission revenue generated by their sponsored clients.

John Power, CFO of Mantara and CEO of MantaraX, said, “We are delighted to provide our sponsoring broker-dealer clients with the ability to custom-structure their participation with Mantara for a solution that best fits their usage model and provides their high-frequency trading clients with seamless access to expressWay’s leading edge execution software.  It is innovative approaches such as these that place Mantara at the forefront of the technology providers in our space.”

MantaraX offers clients an additional channel through which to optimize order flow and to benefit from Mantara’s innovative next-generation execution system.  More info through
. 

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Wall Street Systems in Second Major Acquisition of 2010

Wall Street Systems (Wallstreet), the global provider of treasury, trading and settlement solutions and services, has acquired City Financials, the corporate treasury specialist used by over 50 of the largest companies in the world. This acquisition further strengthens Wallstreet’s market leadership in providing solutions to the most sophisticated and complex organizations as treasury becomes more strategic and global. Better management of cash, liquidity and risk are high on the agenda of corporate boardrooms.

Wallstreet will integrate City Financials’ corporate treasury business into its existing portfolio of treasury assets.  The acquired software will sit between Wallstreet Treasury, which caters to the needs of mid-tier corporations, and Wallstreet Suite, which is favoured by Global 200 corporations and central banks. City Financials will be offered as installed software at the client’s site or as software-as-a-service (SaaS). 

The announcement follows last month’s acquisition of electronic bank account management specialist Speranza.  Paul Mahady, President of Market Advisory Services (MAS), was a strategic advisor to Wall Street Systems on its acquisition of City Financials.

Larry Ng, Managing Director, Corporate Development, Wall Street Systems commented, “City Financials is a great fit for Wallstreet. We now have a full range of the best treasury solutions and services in the marketplace. The economic turmoil has clearly demonstrated the vital importance of Treasury. Companies are demanding better access and control of their cash and liquidity. We are committed to helping our clients meet these new challenges for the long term by investing across all areas for the purpose of their benefit. We see our clients as partners, and therefore our success is tied to their success.”

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Getting to Know Paul Krugman -- Economist, Columnist and only Recently, Political

What good had Wall Street ever done for America, asks Larissa MacFarquhar’s profile of Paul Krugman in The New Yorker.

Krugman is skeptical about the financial services industry.

“That’s everybody’s challenge: come up with a clearly beneficial example of financial innovation without mention A.T.M.s, and no one can do it. If there are arbitrage opportunities and you’re able to spot them a few seconds before anybody else, you can make a lot of money, but there’s no actual social gain from doing that.”

Good profile, and amazing to see how late he was to become interested in politics – he was mostly interested in problem-solving in economics and worked in Reagan’s Council of Economic
Advisers. He is pretty critical of some people in politics. Don Regan, Reagan’s Secretary of Treasury “was not that bright.” And he can’t stand Robert Reich or Lester Thurow (known among economists as Less than Thorough) for glib assertions and inadequate thought.

The profile shows the distance between economics and finance, and corporate governance, for that matter and he was critical of Obama, his last choice among the Democratic candidates, for all his sentimental feel-good stuff.

And he is a science fiction fan.

“If you read other genres of fiction you can learn about the way people are and the way society is, but you don’t get very much thinking about why things are the way they are, or what might make them different. What would happen if.”

Economics, he learned at Yale, was a way of making sense of the world.

If you read Krugman, whether you love him or hate him, you should find this interesting.

Also see the transcript of the author’s live chat with Krugman.

From the interview

“Government isn’t nearly as bad—or the private sector nearly as good—as it’s often portrayed. I know I lot of very good, very hard-working government employees; and while I don’t work for a large corporation, I do read Dilbert.”

Read more:

Friday, January 29, 2010

Smart Asset Management Operations - Solo, Off-Shore or Lift-Out Feb. 11 New York

Ness Technologies is sponsoring an exclusive gathering of asset management professionals, and once the work is done, the wine tasting begins.

The evening begins with a blue-ribbon panel to discuss challenges facing the industry, particularly how managers can bolster investment performance through strategic, operational and technical improvements. Issues to be discussed include: 

Coping with pricing and margin pressure from reduced or negative net asset flow

Pros and cons of offshoring, outsourcing and insourcing

Plus: A look ahead at the post-recession landscape

Speakers include Lou Maiuri, Global Head of Outsourcing at BNY Mellon; Dan Houlihan Senior Vice President of Investment Operations Outsourcing at Northern Trust; Martyn Greene former CIO of Wachovia Asset Management; and John Chainey former VP at Franklin Templeton.

One the work is done, it’s time for a professional wine tasting—which is also an opportunity to chat with panelists and network with peers.

Questions:contact Financial Technologies Forum at (646) 395 6340.

February 11 | 5:30 to 8:00 PM
RSVP via email or by phone: (646) 395 6340

Historic Bayard’s
One Hanover Square | New York
Registration: 5:30 to 6:00 PM
Panel: 6:00 to 7:00 PM
Wine Tasting: 7:00 to 8:00 PM

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

TABB Group announces capital markets on-line forum

TABB Group today launched TabbFORUM (http://www.tabbforum.com), the financial markets first-ever website devoted to contributing and sharing opinions covering issues directly affecting the world’s capital markets, from high-frequency trading and regulatory reform, to market structure, transparency and risk affecting the equities and derivatives markets around the world. The research firm has invited about 20,000 capital markets professionals to register for access to TabbFORUM. The forum will provide an on-line community where members can be quickly updated on current industry issues and have a place to get their voices heard, either anonymously or by name, with the simple click of a mouse.

“Once registered at TabbFORUM, members can share their ideas, read what others are thinking, explore issues, initiate conversations, challenge current positions, influence others and turn their thoughts into action,” says Larry Tabb, founder and CEO at TABB Group, the capital markets–focused research and consulting firm that developed TabbFORUM.  “When I launched TABB Group in June 2003, I said, ‘Difficult times require new business, technology and management strategies.’ That is truer today than it was six years ago and with TabbFORUM we are extending that vision to the collective intelligence of the capital markets industry around the world.”

It’s off to an impressive start—commentators at the launch include Seth Merrin, CEO, Liquidnet; Peter Lupoff, ex-Millennium and current CEO, Tiburon Capital Management; Till Guldimann, vice chairman, SunGard; Valerie Bannert-Thurner, executive director, FTEN Europe; and Hirander Misra, COO, Chi-X Europe.  Dozens more are in the queue, says Larry Tabb, founder of the group. 

“The initial reaction has been outstanding,” said Tabb.  “For years, head traders and senior executives told us that they’ve had something important to say but no centralized place to say it; that they need different types of industry information but felt they couldn’t always trust the source; that they needed a dedicated forum to deliver their opinions the way they wanted them said.  With TabbFORUM, we’re tapping directly into that need.”

Editorial content at TabbFORUM includes fresh streams of written, audio and video commentaries from senior industry players, Q&As with leading market participants, late-breaking industry headlines covering people, market events and firms, charts and statistical data, industry events, white papers, job postings and education and training programs around the world.

Since Larry Tabb is so widely known and well respected in the business, this should be one to watch.

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