SuperDerivatives, provider of options pricing and a multi-asset derivatives platform for revaluation and risk management, says hedge fund administrator Columbus Avenue Consulting has chosen its credit derivatives platform, SD-CD, to price its clients’ portfolios. Columbus has more than $6.5 billion in assets under administration, and in excess of 45 employees. It offers full onshore and offshore administrative services to hedge fund and fund of hedge fund clients.

(more…)

Credaris Portfolio Management has tapped Markit Group to supply pricing and asset valuations for its credit data services. Under the deal, Credaris will gain access to Markit’s credit default swap and loan pricing, as well as to its Markit Reference Entity Database. Credaris, which has EUR 1.3 billion under management, provides asset management services for institutions seeking to generate high returns from their credit assets.

J.P. Morgan has become the second firm to go live with the T-Zero post-trade straight-through processing platform for credit derivatives. T-Zero, a spin off from credit trading outfit Creditex, is already being used to process live trades between Goldman Sachs and hedge fund KBC Alternative Investment Management and is yet another system responding to the increasing pressure from US and UK regulators to clear up the backlog of trade confirmations. The system has been designed to electronically capture and re-direct all trade details, assignments, allocations and other relevant details in the processing of credit derivatives. The platform automatically allows counterparties to send affirmed trades to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation for same-day or T+0 legal execution.

Meanwhile, Thunderhead is integrating its document generation platform for OTC derivative trade confirmations with T-Zero’s post-trade processing system, to offer greater automation for the credit derivatives (CDS) market. As a result, Thunderhead can now automatically produce a variety of trade confirmation formats including print, fax, email web and FpML upon receiving an FpML message from T-Zero. This allows dealers to improve the quality and accuracy of their credit trade data before generating physical trade confirmations through the Thunderhead platform. In addition, Thunderhead’s recent announcement of its XML Adapter for the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s Deriv/SERV, which generates DTCC compliant FpML, will enable automated settlement of credit trades as part of this process.

Twelve dealers have stated they will use Swapswire to reach compliance with the 2005 Novation Protocol, published by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA). ISDA issued the protocol to reduce derivatives settlement backlogs, a large percentage of which are due to novations, the mechanism by which buy-side clients exit derivatives positions prior to maturity by transferring the rights and obligations of the original transaction to a third party. The 12 dealers are: ABN Amro, Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS Investment Bank. The Swapswire system allows the transferer to communicate a fully defined derivative transaction with all trade detail to both the so-called remaining party and the transferee. The remaining party can signal their consent, and the transferee can also confirm that they have received and are in agreement with the trade details. The process used effects a fully ISDA-compliant legal novation confirmation in electronic format, eliminating the need for the three parties to separately generate and match novation documentation. Swapswire supports a wide range of OTC derivative products including interest-rate, credit and equity derivatives.

Risk management platform provider Algorithmics is to include Fitch Ratings’ issuer ratings within its Algo OpVantage Financial Institutions Risk Scenario Trends (First) database of case studies. The addition is aimed at allowing clients to analyze the cost of a risk event. It will also allow Algorithmics to track the impact of operational risk events on a company’s credit rating.

Xenomorph has provided an integrated data driver between its TimeScape Enterprise Solution and Markit’s credit data web services supporting integration of credit derivatives and bonds daily pricing and Reference Entity Database (RED) from Markit. Markit’s dataset also supports the independent pricing of credit instruments using TimeScape’s Pricing Services.