Our free FinTech update also covers new partners SimCorp & State Street, Euronext & Borsa Italiana, and BT & TP ICAP.
Fidelity to Make Ops & IT Hires Too
Money manager Fidelity Investments is on hiring spree and is seeking to fill approximately 4,000 positions across the U.S. over the coming six months to meet “unprecedented customer growth and engagement,” Fidelity says.
“Recent market volatility and an increasingly complex economic environment has driven millions of new and existing customers to open accounts, increase trading activity and contribute additional savings, resulting in an overall need for increased financial support and guidance,” according to Fidelity. “This continued growth and engagement is accelerating Fidelity’s investment in the future of the company, including a 15 percent increase in the number of client-facing associates in 2020.”
The firm is hiring “4,000 new client-facing positions … including financial advisors, licensed representatives, and customer service representatives. Half of these positions are expected to be filled by year-end,” according to Fidelity.
“Beyond customer-facing, Fidelity continues to hire thousands across many other roles, including in technology and operations. As Fidelity fills these new positions, the company will also be actively recruiting 1,000 college and university students for its 2021 summer internship program and 500 2021 graduates to participate in select post-graduate training programs.”
To reach new talent, the firm is using machine learning and natural language processing to screen candidates and to diversify its outreach to candidates. In addition, Fidelity “has improved its onboarding and assimilation processes during these challenging times,” officials say.
Partnership Links State Street’s Alpha & SimCorp Dimension
Custodian bank State Street Corp. and investment management vendor SimCorp are forming a business partnership to offer an outsourced, integrated, front-to-back investment solution for insurance firms in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), officials say.
The integration of SimCorp Dimension with the State Street Alpha platform will address “what has historically been a fragmented, expensive and time-consuming process across the investment lifecycle,” officials say.
The arrangement will allow EMEA-based insurance companies to access SimCorp Dimension’s cloud-based, multi-asset class capabilities, accounting functions, and managed services, and to access State Street’s data management, middle office and custody services via the State Streets Alpha platform, officials say.
In fact, the Alpha platform will be integrating SimCorp Dimension and State Street’s proprietary software solutions such as those from Charles River Development, which State Street acquired two years ago.
“The solution comes as EMEA insurers face increasing pressure due to low returns, a decline in interest rates, increased regulatory burden and rising technology costs,” according to SimCorp. The new partnership will focus on operational efficiency, improved accuracy and “timely, high-quality, multi-asset data” for front-to-back operations.
Euronext Moves to Buy Borsa Italiana Group
Euronext’s managing and supervisory boards have unanimously approved the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group for a €4.325 billion ($5.1 billion).
Euronext will buy100 percent of the London Stock Exchange Group’s entire, issued share capital holdings in Italia S.p.A., the holding company of Borsa Italiana, according to a binding agreement.
The proposed acquisition “enhances the scale of Euronext, diversifies its business mix into new asset classes and strengthen its post-trade activities,” officials say. “With this transaction, Euronext delivers on its ambition to build the leading pan-European market infrastructure.”
“The potential transaction is conditional upon, amongst other things, the divestment of the Borsa Italiana Group or a material part thereof being a condition of the European Commission’s clearance decision for LSEG’s proposed acquisition of Refinitiv,” officials say.
The transaction was financed via a bridge loan financing and long-term financing to be implemented through a mix of existing available cash, new debt and new equity in the form of a private placement to CDP Equity and Intesa Sanpaolo and a rights offer to Euronext’s shareholders, officials say.
Euronext official say they will hold an extraordinary general meeting on Nov. 20 “to submit the proposed combination, private placement and rights offer for approval,” officials say. The acquisition will be completed after Euronext’s and LSEG’s shareholder approve it, and after regulatory approvals in Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium and France. The acquisition will also need a declaration of non-objection from Euronext’s College of Regulators, competition clearance in Germany, and approval of Euronext as a suitable purchaser by the European Commission.
The transaction will require the divestment of the Borsa Italiana Group “or a material part thereof being a condition of the European Commission’s clearance decision for LSEG’s proposed acquisition of Refinitiv,” according to Euronext. The acquisition is expected to be complete during the first half of 2021.
BT & TP ICAP Sign Seven-Year Services Deal
Interdealer broker TP ICAP and telecommunications giant BT Group have signed a seven-year contract that will bring a software-based platform and applications featuring remote working capabilities to 700 brokers in London, officials say.
The BT Trading systems will help “TP ICAP’s execution services across voice trading venues,” officials add.
“BT Trading is a unified communications and collaboration (UCC) platform engineered specifically for the high-performance real-time trading, regulatory and security needs of the global capital markets,” according to BT officials. “It can be accessed by brokers working remotely and is integrated with leading unified communications platforms from Microsoft and Cisco. It includes a powerful suite of applications and devices supported by systems either hosted by customers in their own data centers, by BT or in the public cloud.”
The deal will help TP ICAP decrease “broking operations expenditure by reducing the real estate needed for technology infrastructure and disaster recovery sites,” officials add.
“BT is also deploying its BT Trading soft turret app which replicates on a mobile device or PC the hardware turrets, also known as dealer boards, used by brokers on trading floors. This will enhance business resilience by ensuring brokers can communicate with customers and have access to markets just as if they were in the office,” officials say.
“BT’s deep knowledge of voice and collaboration technology complements our wider ambitions to improve the efficiency of our client-facing services,” says Martin Ryan, group chief operating officer (COO) of TP ICAP, in a prepared statement.
