In other news, CQG joins an FIA Tech effort, SimCorp focuses on Australia, NTAM launches a diversity outreach, and Acadia debuts a pre-trade analytics tool.
Germany’s LPA Plans U.S. Expansion
Serge Malka
LPA, the capital markets technology and advisory firm headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, with offices in a dozen cities around the world, reports a United States expansion plan.
The plan calls for a new office in New York City and the appointment of Serge Malka as the firm’s U.S. managing director.
He joins LPA from Cognizant Consulting, “where he was the Capital Markets and Risk Practice Leader, responsible for many organizational, regulatory and technology projects, touching on both regulatory transformation and compliance, as well as digital transformation and human experience in the capital markets space,” according to LPA’s statement.
His mandate includes building on “LPA’s significant growth trajectory and its strong international client base,” per the statement.
“Technology is no longer a financial tool. It’s an industry in itself,” Peter Schurau, LPA’s CEO, says in the statement. “Financial markets worldwide are now operating on an interconnected, global scale having been bolstered by an unparalleled rise in trading volumes. In the digital age, it’s no longer enough to just transform workflows into this new medium, you have to transform the way finance works, and LPA enables such change.”
LPA was founded in 1999. — L.Ch
CQG First to Join FIA Tech’s Databank Network
CQG, a front-end trading systems vendor, is the first vendor to join the FIA Tech Databank Network, allowing CQG platforms for traders, brokers, commercial hedgers, and exchanges to interoperate with FIA Tech services, officials say.
“Databank Network is FIA Tech’s initiative to bring together independent software vendors (ISVs), exchanges, clearing houses and other data providers into an interoperable global network simplifying the use of reference data, analytics and software solutions from participating firms,” according to FIA Tech officials. FIA Tech is a technology provider to the exchange-traded derivative industry.
The Databank Network bring together “reference data from over 80 exchanges and central counterparties (CCPs) globally, leading index providers including FTSE, MSCI, S&P and STOXX, and data vendors EDI and Factset,” officials add.
“By incorporating CQG symbology into the global product reference data maintained on the Databank Network, CQG platforms will be fully interoperable with all FIA Tech services as well as other future ISV participants in the Databank Network,” officials say.
The databank “provides firms with a cross-reference of exchange and vendor product symbologies, which can be used by subscribers to simplify integration of systems from best-of-breed providers, communicate more easily with clients and counterparties, and simplify integration to FIA Tech services,” officials say.
SimCorp & Challenger Partner to Launch a Company for Australia
Challenger, an Australian investment management firm, and SimCorp, an investment management software-as-a-service specialist vendor, have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” expressing their intention to enter into a “strategic partnership to launch a new stand-alone company.”
That company will provide “investment administration services to Challenger, Fidante Partners and third-party clients,” according to a statement. “The new company intends to be Australia’s first cloud-based front-to-back investment operations platform, providing fully integrated investment administration services for asset managers and owners across Australia and APAC.”
The new company is meant to be “powered by SimCorp’s full technology and service stack, including data management, client communications as well as Investment Accounting Services,” per the statement.
“Existing Challenger employees who operate the platform will transition to support the new business in building a truly unique client proposition,” according to the statement. “Challenger’s current Group Chief Operating Officer, David Mackaway, will become the CEO of the business.” As part of the agreement, Challenger will move its current on-premise SimCorp platform to SimCorp’s cloud-based solution. The goal of the new arrangement is to have the business established by July 2022, per the statement.— L.Ch
NTAM Seeks Firms Owned by Minorities, Women, Vets, & the Disabled
Chicago-based Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM) is soliciting requests for information from “broker-dealers owned by minorities, women, veterans or people with disabilities.”
NTAM’s intent is to “provide trade execution services” to those broker-dealers.
Responses to the NTAM solicitation are due by Friday, July 29, at 5:00 PM CT, the firm says in a statement. To respond to NTAM go to: https://bit.ly/3PCJ54N
“Diversity is fundamental to how we invest and to how we execute our entire business,” Angelo Manioudakis, chief investment officer for NTAM, says in a statement. “We have seen in our own firm that different perspectives aid innovation and enhance business operations overall. So, to best serve our clients, it’s only natural that we seek to partner with external partners that bring such diversity of thought.”
In addition, firms interested in attending a bidder’s forum at NTAM’s 50 South LaSalle Street headquarters in Chicago, on Tuesday, June 21, 3:30 CT, should RSVP to: https://bit.ly/3NFeG3X
NTAM says it expects to unveil the broker-dealers it has picked in the fourth quarter of this year. — L.Ch
Acadia Launches Pre-Trade Analytics Tool
Acadia, a maker of risk, margin, and collateral management tools, reports that it is launching a Pre-Trade Analytics (PTA) tool that targets the need for a complementary service for firms in scope for Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR).
The PTA offering will help firms “to estimate the impact on initial margin (IM) exposure for any new trades that a firm was contemplating. The PTA tool meets the need for a centralized solution to review the impact of new trades on a firm’s existing IM exposure, thereby enabling trading decisions that incur the smallest amount of incremental IM exposure to their portfolio,” according to Acadia.
The PTA service links to “Acadia’s IM Threshold Monitor and IM Exposure Manager services and provides a real-time view of the impact of selected trades on firms’ IM exposure,” according to the vendor. The PTA links will help cut “IM costs by evaluating decisions in advance to stay under UMR regulatory IM Threshold. Firms that don’t currently use Acadia to calculate IM exposure can still benefit from the PTA tool as a standalone service that offers easy onboarding.”
In addition, the PTA service helps firms “to send their CRIF [Common Risk Interchange Format] or trade data for the trades they are considering and immediately they will receive analytics on marginal and total portfolio Reg IM exposure at the portfolio, counterparty or group level,” officials say.
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