In other FinTech briefs, the Bank of Thailand will be using SimCorp’s Dimension and IBOR while BNP Paribas Securities Services has signed onto the new corporate actions service of ASX.
ICE to Get Cash & Some TMX Group Assets
The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which owns the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), is selling a Trayport, a vendor of pre-trade energy solutions for traders, brokers and exchanges, to the TMX Group, parent company of the Toronto Stock Exchange, in exchange for certain TMX Group assets and cash of £350 million ($457.2 million).
“In addition to cash, ICE will receive NGX and Shorcan Energy Brokers Inc. upon the completion of the transaction,” according to ICE officials. ICE and TMX Group officials have also entered into “a non-binding memorandum of understanding agreeing to explore in the future further avenues for possible collaboration.”
For its part, TMX Group will be getting London-based Trayport Holdings Ltd. and its U.S.-based affiliate, Trayport Inc. for £550 million (C$931 million) in total consideration, including £350 million (C$592 million) in cash, according to the TMX Group.
NGX, based in Calgary, provides electronic trading, central counterparty clearing and data services to the North American natural gas, electricity and oil markets, officials say. “ICE and NGX have had a longstanding and comprehensive strategic alliance to enable customers to conduct physical clearing for certain natural gas and power hubs through NGX’s clearing house, which is a CFTC-registered Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO). NGX’s exchange is CFTC-registered as a Foreign Board of Trade (FBOT). Shorcan Energy offers brokerage services for the North American crude oil markets.”
Officials add that the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has approved the sale of Trayport to TMX Group.
“The sale of NGX and Shorcan Energy to ICE is subject to regulatory approvals and notifications, and is anticipated to close in late 2017 or early 2018. ICE will provide more details on its third quarter earnings call on November 2, 2017,” according to ICE.
Bank of Thailand to Deploy SimCorp Dimension & IBOR
The Bank of Thailand, the central bank for the Southeast Asian country, has selected the SimCorp Dimension platform from investment management solutions vendor SimCorp to support the reserve management and monetary policy operations of its $226 billion in reserves, say bank and vendor officials.
The central bank will leverage SimCorp Dimension’s integrated Investment Book of Record (IBOR) technology and “will use the system to manage its end-to-end business processes across all asset classes,” officials say. “The system will in particular be used to support financial risk management, performance and attribution, compliance, collateral management, settlement and accounting.”
Bank officials hope that by integrating all operations onto a single system, “the bank will have a unified view of assets for risk assessment and compliance at all times. Equally important, the cross-functional solution will enable The Bank of Thailand to establish higher levels of process automation, scalability and agility to adapt to new, complex market conditions and demands,” officials say.
“After an extensive vendor selection process, SimCorp Dimension proved to be the most comprehensive solution to meet our requirements for integration, automation and transparency, all on a single platform. The system will allow us to consolidate our system landscape to achieve improved investment management capabilities,” says Dr Amporn Sangmanee, head of reserve management department, Bank of Thailand in a prepared statement.
BNP Paribas Securities Services to Use ASX Corporate Actions Offering
Officials at exchanges operator ASX report that BNP Paribas Securities Services is the first custodian to use ASX’s ReferencePoint ISO 20022 Corporate Actions announcement service that works with SWIFT global messaging.
“The new service, built and developed by ASX, allows straight-through delivery of corporate actions announcements to clients within seconds of the announcement being made to the broader market,” according to ASX.
The ASX service is intended to be the initial step to “a fully automated end-to-end solution, removing many of the inefficiencies that exist in the processing of corporate actions.,” ASX officials say.
“Working with the ASX, we are the first custodian able to send our clients their corporate action notices within seconds, rather than hours. This latest enhancement is part of our Augmented Custody program, which is designed to make our custody processes more efficient, and complements the work we are currently undertaking to manage the corporate actions announcement process using blockchain technology,” says Luc Renard, head of financial intermediaries and corporate clients, Asia Pacific at BNP Paribas Securities Services, in a prepared statement.
ASX officials say that it is “among the first exchanges in the world to support ISO 20022, the latest international securities messaging standard for corporate actions.”
The embrace of the standard is part of “a number of major initiatives in the post-trade space,” officials say. “ASX is enhancing its ISO 20022 offering to capture and disseminate all corporate action events. ReferencePoint is ASX’s flagship reference data and corporate action service, used widely by trading participant back-offices, information vendors, and other data distributors.”
ASX provides integrated listings, trading, clearing and settlement services facilitating “access to and exchange of capital, management of risk, and provision of data and other solutions,” officials say. “ASX operates across multiple asset classes including equities, fixed income, commodities and energy.”
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