In other news, GTreasury and Apex Group make acquisitions, Broadway hires from Bloomberg, and FINOS had a membership surge last year.
Citi Integrates ACES With Bloomberg’s BSKT
Citi and Bloomberg officials report that they have integrated Bloomberg’s service for negotiating fixed income baskets, known as BSKT, with a proprietary platform from Citi known as ACES (Citi Advanced ETF System).
The integration is intended to provide better support for Citi’s exchange-traded funds (ETF) clients that use BSKT.
The integration between the two solutions will “provide an optimized basket negotiation experience for mutual ETF clients who manage fixed income portfolios,” officials say. “The collaboration between Citi and Bloomberg allows Citi to scale its fixed income ETF servicing business.”
The BSKT primary market solution can be used for “negotiation, ticketing and
routing ETF creation and redemption transactions,” officials add. The ACES suite includes workflow tools for automating the “entire ETF process reducing time to market and cost to issuers.”
The collaboration with Citi and its efforts in the ETF primary markets “is an important part of our vision to improve ETF creation and redemption through the Bloomberg Terminal,” says Benjamin Morris, ETF product manager at Bloomberg, in a prepared statement.
“Bloomberg subscribers can access more information via BSKT<GO> on the Bloomberg Terminal,” according to Bloomberg.
GTreasury Acquires Hedge Trackers
GTreasury, a Chicago-based treasury and risk management platform provider, reports that it has acquired Hedge Trackers, a provider of accounting, consulting, and software services meant to protect clients against financial risk.
“The acquisition joins Hedge Trackers’ hedge accounting expertise and SaaS [software as a service] solutions with GTreasury’s … treasury and risk management platform,” according to a GTreasury statement.
“The combination of the two companies provides customers with best-in-class, integrated risk management technologies while continuing to expand GTreasury’s SaaS ecosystem built for treasury teams and the office of the CFO chief financial officer],” the statement adds.
“Most CFOs and treasury teams understand the criticality of exposures and forecasts, but the highest-performing teams recognize and act on the subtle nuances directly impacting exposure,” Renaat Ver Eecke, the CEO of GTreasury, notes in the statement. “These are key decisions that have an outsized effect on corporate finances.”
GTreasury spotlights its more than 800 customers and 30+ industries reaching 160+ countries worldwide. — L.Ch
Apex Group Buys New Zealand-based MMC
Apex Group Ltd., a financial services provider established in Bermuda in 2003, reports the proposed acquisition of MMC, a New Zealand provider of investment administration services.
The transaction is subject to customary conditions (including regulatory approvals expected to be granted in early 2022), the group points out in a statement.
The acquisition of MMC will add a 170-person office in Auckland, which will include 30 local market experts, per Apex.
MMC’s clients will participate in the group’s provision of “additional services including digital banking, global compliance solutions, and ESG Ratings and Advisory; and accessing new markets through its globally connected operating model.”
Apex now operates from 50 offices worldwide, with 5,000 employees servicing US$1.5 trillion in assets across administration, depositary, custody and under management – expected to rise to US$2.2 trillion following completion of the planned acquisition of Sanne Group Plc, per the statement. — L.Ch
Broadway Taps Bloomberg for New Head of Product Post
Brad Small
Broadway, a provider of front-office processes and procedures, reports the appointment of Brad Small as head of product.
Small is a business, product and fixed-income veteran, Broadway says in its statement, and his mandate includes working “closely with Broadway’s global clients and industry partners to ensure they stay on the cutting edge of innovation in today’s evolving fixed income market.”
Prior to joining, Small was a fixed income product manager at Bloomberg, where he also “was product owner of fixed income analytics. He also concentrated on regulatory change and fixed income market structure, leading projects for MiFID II and Libor transition while working with regulators and industry associations.”
Small has added two persons to Broadway’s product group, appointing Mousuf Chowdhury senior product manager in Broadway’s London office, and Jason Trzcinka senior product manager in New York.
The company, founded in 2003, is a provider of “front-office fintech solutions to sell-side and buy-side clients, including more than half of the top 50 banks in the world,” the Broadway statement adds.
Broadway maintains offices in New York, Austin, Chicago, London, and Toronto. — L.Ch
FINOS Boosted Membership by 34% in 2021
Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), the financial services sector project of the Linux Foundation, says that it in 2021 it had a 34 percent increase in new corporate members — the “largest yearly growth on record,” officials say.
“In total, FINOS now has 53 members leveraging its open source collaboration forum, including the most recent additions of Bank of Montreal (BMO), Fannie Mae and NatWest Markets in addition to 16 more fintech and financial services organizations this past year,” according to FINOS, which now has more than 1,200 contributors working on projects.
“The success we’ve seen over the past year is a testament to the growing interest for and increased mission-critical nature of open source in the financial services industry,” says Gabriele Columbro, executive director of FINOS, in a prepared statement.
“FINOS also added five new board members in 2021, which reflects an exceptional concentration of talent and intellectual capital atop the foundation. John Madsen, chief architect for technology, Goldman Sachs chairs the board and Kim Prado, [chief information officer], US Capital Markets, BMO is the co-chair,” according to FINOS.
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