For our FinTech roundup, we also cover a BlackRock Vet joining IHS Markit, WeTrust & Refinitiv, Wolters Kluwer & cloud-native IT, and FeedStock’s senior hires.
Capitolis to Speed Up Product Development
Citi, JPMorgan, and State Street have invested a total of $11 million in fintech startup Capitolis, whose proprietary technology platform helps trading firms streamline their trading-position strategies.
A spokesperson for Capitolis confirms media reports that the funding from the trio is $11 million in total. The spokesperson declines to comment upon individual contributions.
“Capitolis intends to use the funds from this latest investment to further accelerate its technology and product development, as well as expand sales and marketing initiatives in the months ahead,” the Capitolis spokesperson tells FTF News.
A software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, the Capitolis system helps firms “optimize balance sheet exposures through collaborative technology by eliminating unnecessary positions and finding the most suitable party to hold the remaining positions, ” according to a vendor statement. “The transaction represents a collaborative effort by the three leading global financial which helps financial institutions free up capital and remove barriers that would otherwise restrict trading.”
Capitolis officials say that they have “eliminated $5 trillion in overall positions for more than 50 financial institutions, including many of the world’s largest banks, as well as leading hedge funds and asset managers.”
“There is much more transformation yet to come,” says Gil Mandelzis, CEO and founder of Capitolis, in a statement.
This latest announcement follows a $40 million Series B funding round in November 2019, led by Spark Capital and SVB Capital, with participation from existing investors Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and S Capital, according to Capitolis officials.
“State Street is very pleased to announce this latest investment, which is another significant milestone in our three-year partnership with Capitolis,” says Tobias Krause, head of global markets resource management for State Street, in a statement. “Their products have improved resource efficiencies and unlocked previously idle capacity in OTC [over-the-counter] markets.”
BlackRock Veteran Joins IHS Markit
Zion Hilelly
IHS Markit reports that Zion Hilelly has joined the financial services data, systems, and analytics vendor as managing director, head of operations, client support and service and transformation for its financial services solutions business.
Hilelly is based in New York and reports to Andrew Eisen, senior vice president and head of financial services solutions. Hilelly joins after more than 20 years at BlackRock, IHS Markit says in a statement.
The IHS Markit position is newly created, the company notes, and Hilelly’s new mandate includes “spearheading a business acceleration and agility initiative to streamline data operations, WSO Services and software operations, cloud-hosted and managed services and global software, data and services support functions across Financial Services Solutions.”
WSO services include “cloud-based loan portfolio software,” according to Markit. WSO refers to Wall Street Office, which IHS Markit acquired.
The IHS Markit financial services solutions business includes such products as ClearPar, WSO, iLEVEL, Debtdomain, EDM and thinkFolio, the firm adds in its statement.
WeTrust Asset Management to Use Refinitiv Systems
Refinitiv, a provider of trading and reference market data and infrastructure systems for securities firms, reports that WeTrust Asset Management, a Singapore-based hedge fund, will employ its “end-to-end trading workflow and data solutions” for its investment management operations.
WeTrust Asset Management was founded by Keith Wu, former head of equity investment for China Everbright Ltd., according to a Refinitiv statement.
The vendor will provide WeTrust “with a multi-broker, cross asset, electronic execution platform whilst equipping the firm with automated pre-post trade compliance, integrated risk, modelling, rebalancing and live P&L for order management,” according to the Refinitiv statement.
Refinitiv provides data and infrastructure to more than 40,000 institutions in approximately 190 countries, the statement notes.
WeTrust Asset Management was founded in 2019 by Keith Wu Yuanqing and “other veteran investors of Chinese equity markets,” according to the statement.
WeTrust officials launched a flagship China-focused long/short equity strategy, “WeTrust Absolute Return Growth Fund, on 1 June 2020.”
Wolters Kluwer Report Focuses on Ops & Cloud-Native IT
Vendor Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Regulatory Reporting (FRR) business unit argues in a new white paper that “containerization, container orchestration, and other concepts usually associated with cloud implementations” are helping financial services firms adapt to volatile economic conditions and the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
“Cloud-native technology, at a fundamental level, ensures an institution’s resources are used more efficiently by reducing fixed costs and allowing better management of available assets. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for such operational flexibility,” according to a statement from Wolters Kluwer.
“The ability to shift operationally from a farm of servers costing tens of thousands of dollars to virtually zero if your activity suddenly dries up, is a substantial margin control tool that is enabled by cloud-native technologies,” says Steve Hostettler, director of product software engineering at Wolters Kluwer FRR and author of the paper, in a prepared statement.
“The benefits of using container technology – shells that encapsulate applications specifically designed for the cloud – do not, however, require immediately going to the cloud. Whether deployed on-premise or in the cloud, containers and container orchestration technology – like Kubernetes, Docker and Helm – help organizations respond to opportunities in times of economic expansion but also rapidly reduce costs when hit with a crisis like COVID-19,” Hostettler says.
The paper “Leveraging Cloud-Native Technologies to Optimize Financial Services Operations” can be found here https://bit.ly/3bXPaFc
FeedStock Makes Two Senior Hires
Charisma Mehta
FeedStock, a London, U.K.-based maker of an artificial intelligence data analytics platform, reports that it has made two new senior hires.
They are Charisma Mehta and Emily Querfurth, who will be head of product and finance director, respectively.
Mehta will “drive product development for FeedStock ac
Emily Querfurth
ross its portfolio,” while Querfurth will be “responsible for overseeing the financial performance of the company,” according to a FeedStock statement.
Mehta reports into Co-CEO Charlie Henderson and Querfurth reports into Co-CEO Lucas Wurfbain, according to the vendor statement.
FeedStock’s staff consists of industry professionals, developers, and data scientists.
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