Outspoken Wall Street critic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is blasting SEC Chair Mary Jo White and the regulator’s record over the past two years in a letter that raises “serious concerns” about White’s leadership of the agency. Describing White’s tenure as “extremely disappointing,” Warren says that the agency is not “consistently and aggressively” enforcing… Read More >>
MarginSphere 2 Targets OTC Margin Flow Surge
Margining automation vendor AcadiaSoft is targeting MarginSphere 2, the first major upgrade to its flagship platform, at easing the burden of compliance with new margining regulations coming down the pipeline for non-centrally cleared derivatives, officials say. First released in 2009, MarginSphere is an electronic margining platform for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives that automates the margining process…. Read More >>
CastleOak Securities Hires MD from Deutsche Bank
Boutique investment banking firm CastleOak Securities has hired Rick Carr as a senior managing director and co-head of sales and trading, officials say. In his new role, Carr will report to David R. Jones, president and CEO of CastleOak, and he will be focused on “building the firm’s fixed income business and team nationally, with… Read More >>
SEC Taps Goldman Sachs for Chief of Staff
SEC officials report that Andrew J. “Buddy” Donohue has been named the agency’s chief of staff, replacing Lona Nallengara, who will leave the agency in June. As chief of staff, Donohue will be a senior adviser to Chair Mary Jo White on “all policy, management, and regulatory issues,” according to an SEC statement. Most recently,… Read More >>
Polish CCP Clears First OTC Trades
Polish clearinghouse KDPW_CCP has cleared the first over-the-counter (OTC) trades denominated in Polish zloty (PLN) between Citi Handlowy and mBank, officials say. The launch of KDPW_CCP’s OTC derivatives and repo clearing service was mandated by the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), according to which all OTC trades of certain derivatives must be cleared by an… Read More >>
Q&A: ‘Custom Integration Can Be Resource-Intensive’
Kevin Carter, the chief technology officer (CTO) for the New York-based Dialectic Capital Management, gave a presentation on vendor management at FTF’s SecOps USA 2015 conference in New York this week. His session, “Multiple systems, One Enterprise: Integrating Many Vendors into Your Operations Team,” focused on the challenges of managing multiple vendors in increasingly complex… Read More >>
TORA Releases Real-Time Stock Borrow Solution
Tora, a provider of trading technology services, reports the release of a stock borrow management solution integrated with prime broker eLocate platforms. The eLocate feature also is integrated with Tora’s allocation engine, which can distribute borrow across different accounts with different prime brokerages, according to a Tora spokesperson. The solution enables clients to transform an… Read More >>
FBN Securities Picks SS&C’s MarketTrader
SS&C Technologies, a provider of financial services software and software-enabled services, reports that its MarketTrader will be FBN Securities’ order management system (OMS). In a statement SS&C, founded in 1986, characterizes FBN, established in 1983, as a “boutique institutional brokerage firm, which provides its clients with a variety of services including equity and derivative execution,… Read More >>
Markit to Acquire Information Mosaic
Financial data and technology vendor Markit is acquiring the corporate actions and post-trade securities processing provider Information Mosaic in a bid to position itself as “a leading provider of end-to-end corporate actions services,” say Markit officials. Financial terms were not disclosed by either vendor. “The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of… Read More >>
Wall Street and Silicon Valley Fight for Talent
You might want to add Paul Revere of Wall Street to Jamie Dimon’s other titles, but it’s not the British invasion that the chairman, president and CEO of JPMorgan Chase recently warned about. “Silicon Valley is coming,” he declared in his April 8 annual letter to shareholders. “There are hundreds of startups with a lot… Read More >>