In other news, SIX launches a Corporate Action Calendar, EquiLend has a DLT-based pilot & Northern Trust advances a voluntary carbon credits platform.
200 New Jobs Are Coming to Belfast
Options Technology, a provider of cloud-enabled managed services, plans to “create 200 new jobs in Belfast over the next three years” as it expands its operations, officials say.
The company is headquartered in Belfast City Centre’s Linen Loft building.
The company added “100 new team members” over the past year. Options continues “remains steadfast in its focus on recruiting high-quality graduates and engineering professionals, strengthening its ties with local academic institutions,” officials say.
“Our decision to expand our workforce in Belfast reflects the exceptional talent we’ve found in this vibrant city,” says Danny Moore, president and CEO of Options, in a prepared statement. “Our program offers graduates the chance to forge a career at the intersection of financial technology and capital markets, and I would encourage all graduates, to apply.”
Options’s recruitment will include “engineering apprentices and talented individuals who have completed their A-Levels. The firm has a rich history of nurturing talent, with over a quarter of the hires in the last 12 months being placement students. Options remains committed to building upon these figures in the coming years, fostering emerging talent and creating a pathway to successful careers in the tech industry,” officials say.
“Graduates hired in Belfast can expect an immersive training experience, spending up to three months in each of the company’s global hubs, including London, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Auckland,” officials say. Options collaborates with Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University, and Belfast Metropolitan College in the placement of students and apprenticeships.
Options’ Graduate & Placement Program is officially scheduled for Wednesday, October 18, 2023, at The National in Belfast, officials say.
SIX Launches a Corporate Action Calendar
Zurich-based SIX, a financial information provider, recently launched what it calls “a fully automated Corporate Action Calendar” that helps clients “reliably and cost-effectively track and process upcoming corporate action events,” officials say.
The calendar covers “mergers and acquisitions, dividends, and stock buybacks — across a firm’s portfolio companies, officials say.
“The new functionality — which is displayed to clients through SIX iD, the user-friendly and intuitive data display tool of SIX — comes in response to surging client demand for more automated corporate action solutions,” officials say.
“Monitoring corporate actions is a labor-intensive process. It costs the back-office departments of asset managers, investment banks, custodians, and clearing houses significant time and money. Yet, according to a SIX survey of market participants spanning Europe, North America, and APAC, 78 percent still process part of their corporate actions manually,” according to SIX.
The Corporate Action Calendar of SIX works by letting clients “import their investment portfolio into the SIX iD Corporate Action Calendar, which then seamlessly displays the data into its user-friendly interface. Via cutting-edge technology, the platform automatically flags any relevant changes to upcoming corporate actions impacting the securities in the portfolio in a timely manner. This helps the team prioritize the workload and enhance operational efficiency,” officials say.
“Beyond relieving pressure on increasingly stretched front and back-office teams, our new offering will free up talent to work more closely on the complex, value-add elements of their job. This helps contribute directly towards maintaining a healthy and competitive position,” says Annelotte De Nanassy, senior product manager, Financial Information, SIX.
EquiLend’s DLT-Based Pilot Targets Recs Processing
EquiLend, a technology, data and analytics provider for the securities finance industry, reports that the pilot of “the distributed ledger technology (DLT) based EquiLend 1Source has successfully commenced” to help the industry eliminate costly, error-prone reconciliations.
Major securities lending industry agent lenders and broker-dealers “are among the participants in the pilot that are actively integrating to EquiLend 1Source. The fully automated DLT system will go live across the market in 2024,” officials say.
“The EquiLend 1Source ledger will retain a central record of the agreements made between counterparties in a securities lending transaction. This eliminates mismatched trade details — which are common in existing workflow — that are currently resolved only through manual, costly reconciliation processes,” officials say.
“When we developed the concept for EquiLend 1Source with the industry’s Digital Transformation Working Group, our goal was to solve critical industry pain points and to empower businesses to continue to trade accurately and efficiently. The successful launch of the EquiLend 1Source pilot shows that the market shares that vision, and that a new, modernized, and efficient chapter has begun for the securities finance industry,” says Ken DeGiglio, chief information officer of EquiLend.
EquiLend announced its 1Source initiative last year, “born out of the EquiLend-convened Digital Transformation Working Group, consisting of many of the most influential securities finance firms globally. Since then, the initiative has harnessed emerging technologies, such as DLT, to develop an industry-wide ‘single source of truth’ for transaction lifecycle events in the securities finance industry,” officials say. “Firms utilizing the EquiLend Spire system, NGT trading platform and EquiLend’s Risk Resolution Suite (R2S) will benefit from seamless integration into EquiLend 1Source.”
EquiLend offers trading, post-trade, data and analytics, regtech, and platform solutions for the securities finance industry. EquiLend has offices in North America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific and is regulated in jurisdictions around the globe, officials say.
Northern Trust Focuses on Voluntary Carbon Credit Transactions
Northern Trust officials say that they have completed “the first stage toward an industry-wide voluntary carbon credit ecosystem that would allow institutional buyers to digitally access carbon credits from leading project developers.”
The announcement follows Northern Trust’s completion of “fully automated transactions on the initial minimum viable product (MVP) digital carbon credit platform it has developed with carbon avoidance and removal project developers including Go Balance Limited, ReGen III (TSXV: GIII) and a direct air capture company in addition to institutional buyers,” officials say.
“The ecosystem utilizes private ledger digital blockchain technology to connect institutional buyers with carbon credit suppliers who are focused on solutions to reduce greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide. The fully digital platform allows purchasers to transact tokenized carbon credits directly with project developers and retire these against their carbon footprint,” according to Northern Trust.
“Project developers transact with buyers of voluntary carbon credits via an online platform. Legal agreements are generated using smart contracts via the Avvoka legal contract tool with the agreement outputs creating the basis of the transaction, driving full straight-through transfer and settlement of the digital credits for fiat currency on the specified settlement date,” officials say.
Northern Trust has been working with an array of project developers on its MVP including Go Balance Limited, a REDD+ project developer that supports the Trocano Araretama REDD+ Project in the Municipality of Borba in Brazil, officials say. “ReGen III, a clean-tech firm recycling used motor oil into high-grade group III synthetic lubricants, which is developing a Texas recycling facility that aims to prevent the release of 900,000 metric tonnes of CO2e per year from entering the atmosphere; and a direct air capture company.”
“Transactions were initiated with these project developers on the MVP in a fully automated way by the following purchasers: MyCarbon, a UK-based Carbon Consultancy firm; White Star Capital, a global multi-stage technology investment firm; and Northern Trust,” officials add. “Further development of the platform, including the first official live transaction, is planned in late 2023.”
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