Performance measurement vendor BISAM’s just announced acquisition of risk analytics specialist FinAnalytica is a response to growing demands among buy-side firms for a unified performance and risk approach, and industry observers are in agreement that the two disciplines are on a parallel and perhaps intersecting path. BISAM officials are not disclosing the financial arrangements for… Read More >>
Q&A with Numerix: Real-World Models Have Many Uses
(Editor’s note: Numerix, a vendor offering cross-asset analytics for derivatives valuations and risk management, recently announced that it has expanded real-world modeling coverage in the Numerix CrossAsset core analytics stack, part of the 12.5 release. The upgrade offers the new Hull-White 2-factor real-world interest rate model (HW2F RW), which supports calibration to a projection curve… Read More >>
Dash Financial Debuts Data Visualization System
Agency broker-dealer Dash Financial has launched Dash360, a data visualization tool intended to help buy-side firms achieve more transparency and attribution into the order routing, execution behavior, costs and performance of securities transactions overseen by Dash, which works in U.S. options and equities markets. “We provide the transparency to see where we routed the order,… Read More >>
Investors Still Like Sell-Side Salespeople
An interesting report on how investors still rely on sell-side advice and interactions even while swap trading is moving quickly to electronic platforms slipped past me, but it’s worthy of belated notice. The report (issued late last month) from Greenwich Associates, “Interest-Rate Derivatives Sales: Not What It Used To Be, But No Less Important,”… Read More >>
Brown Shipley Deploys SimCorp Client Reporting System
Brown Shipley, a private bank in the U.K., has gone from a manual client reporting system to a platform from vendor SimCorp in a bid for greater operational efficiency, officials say. Brown Shipley officials confirm via a press release that by deploying the SimCorp Coric Client Communications system they have “significantly reduced the manual effort… Read More >>
Alacra Says Buy Side Wants Research-on-Demand Service
Business information vendor Alacra says its new Alacra-on-Demand (AOD) research service has recently seen significant adoption by asset managers, hedge funds and private equity firms. AOD had a soft launched in February and provides “a team of experienced researchers on an ad-hoc, pay-as-you-go basis to conduct specialist research,” according to a company statement. Alacra officials… Read More >>
Swaps Margin Rules to Slam Big Sell-Side Firms
New swap margin rules could push more derivatives trading onto clearinghouses and create a host of operational difficulties at big banks, but may leave the buy side relatively unscathed when they go into effect next year, analysts say. Last Wednesday regulators unveiled a draft proposal of the rules, which establish a minimum amount of collateral… Read More >>
Bottom-Line Woes Send Buy Side to the Cloud
A new convergence is underway to make cloud computing more palatable for buy-side firms looking for bottom-line cost savings as they face new derivatives-based demands for more compute power just as profit margins tighten and IT budgets flatten. At the same time, the security, business culture and regulatory barriers that have blocked the cloud are… Read More >>