I’ve been watching from afar the reinvention of the Dow Jones Newswires product offering, through the push into machine-readable news and sentiment measurement capabilities to the launch six months ago of its new F/X Trader news and analysis platform, and so was thrilled to be invited into the London operation’s offices just outside Fortress Wapping to kick the tires on the latter. 
Great session on transparency in OTC securities at Andaz this week at a breakfast hosted by Interactive Data and featuring a practitioner panel moderated by our own Angela Wilbraham. It’s always refreshing to hear a frank exchange of views, and the panel – including BNP Paribas’ Peter Nowell and HSBC’s Chris Johnson – gave an attentive audience a thorough working through of the transparency issues within OTC markets.
More fall-out, it seems, from the ongoing restructuring at Thomson Reuters in the wake of former Markets head Devin Wenig’s resignation in the summer, this time within the Enterprise group. Enterprise chief Jon Robson this week announced the departures of enterprise data management head Sally Hinds and trade and risk chief Andy White, with their responsibilities to be taken over, respectively, by Terry Roche and Bernie Battista, the latter on an interim basis.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has finally issued its first list of globally systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) – a practice that it will reprise on an annual basis every November from now on – but what can these 29 firms expect in terms of new data requirements and when?
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) received 32 responses on the subject of data reporting, standards and aggregation for the OTC derivatives markets to its consultation. Following my summary of the first 16 responses earlier this week (see more 
Last week, I looked at some of the data reporting requirements related to the systemic risk oversight developments going on in the US with regards to scrutinising the hedge funds and private equity markets (see more 
The speech made by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Office of Compliance Inspections and Examination’s director Carlo di Florio at the National Society of Compliance Professionals meeting in Baltimore last week might have been a little heavy handed in its delivery (he referenced philosophers Plato and Aristotle, for one), but the message was an interesting one: data transparency is a fundamental prerequisite to sound enterprise risk management (ERM). Of course, his speech, which he entitled “The Role of Compliance and Ethics in Risk Management,” noted that some degree of ethical change is required in order to ensure that a firm’s risk management culture evolves, but a lot of this is to do with “fair” communications and “disclosure” of relevant data.
As I previously predicted, the spectre of incoming regulation and the standards developments around a new legal entity identifier (LEI) were popular topics for discussion at yesterday’s Data Management for Risk, Analytics and Valuations (DMRAV) conference in London. Panellists and delegates alike discussed the changing dynamics within the data management universe that have meant much more investment and attention has been directed towards the function from both regulators and the industry as a whole. The LEI discussions in particular were also likely prompted by last weekend’s G20 pledge of support for the new identification initiative.
IBM’s announcement this week of plans to acquire Platform Computing vindicates our decision to include some Big Data discussion topics in our Data Management for Risk, Analytics & Valuations conference in London on October 17 – that’s next week.
Valuations and pricing teams are facing a much higher degree of scrutiny from both the regulatory community and the investor community in the glare of the post-crisis data transparency spotlight. Fair value price transparency requirements and the gradual move towards a more harmonised accounting standards environment is set within the context of the whole debate about data quality across the financial services business, in light of incoming regulations such as Basel III and the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). Whether it is related to risk management, pricing, trading or reporting, firms need to be able to stand behind their numbers.
A-Team Insight managing editor Virginie O’Shea speaks to Omgeo’s executive director of industry relations Tony Freeman about the vendor’s recent research into the settlement and account instruction (SSI) space, which highlights the high number of trade fails caused by problems with SSI data. Freeman also elaborates on the changing dynamics in the SSI space caused by increased competition (see commentary on which 
Given the discussions I had with a number of people at Sibos a couple of weeks ago (see more on which 
A-Team Insight Events combine A-Team's expertise in financial markets IT with thought leadership from world-class technology innovators and practical experience from financial market practitioners. In 2011, a quality constituency will once again gather for these focused events in London and New York City.
The FISD’s European Holiday Party last night was – as it always is – a fun affair, and a great way of doing the rounds of the market and reference data set before the Christmas Break. Less jolly was the General Meeting’ flagship regulation panel, which saw panellist after panellist express frustration, confusion and downright bewilderment at the ongoing discussions around MiFID 2.
Loading ...
(more…)