By Ciaran Henry, US country manager for Rule Financial
How have your early career experiences shaped your view of the industry? How did you get involved the financial services business? What attracted you to the industry?
It’s that time of the year again.
After last week’s heated industry discussions on the subject of data vendor licenses and IP rights (see commentary on which 
Another interesting topic from last week’s FIMA conference (see commentary on the vendor lobbying discussions 
This week’s FIMA conference in London as usual saw industry practitioners discussing their recurring bugbears – IP rights within the vendor community, a lack of budget for more strategic data management projects (outside of those tied to compliance) and coping with the cost cutting exercises sweeping the financial services community – but it also involved a number of very interesting ideas being aired with regards to potential collaborative approaches in the data management space.
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 
The recent woes at UBS with its own Nick Leeson/Jerome Kerviel (delete as desired) style rogue trader and this month’s MF Global bankruptcy investigation into its customer data practices have both highlighted an important aspect of data management: control. Whether it be data and system access concerns, or those related to the treatment of customer data (and funds) in the correct manner, keeping a better handle on data is in the minds of both the regulatory community and the industry at large.
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 
This week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) conducted an open meeting about new proposed data reporting requirements for the private funds sector for systemic risk monitoring purposes. The SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have been tasked with adopting a joint form to collect critical systemic risk data about hedge funds and other private funds, with a view to supporting the work of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and as required by Dodd Frank. Form PF (for ‘private fund’) is the result of this work.
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.
By Chris Pickles, head of industry initiatives, BT Global Banking and Financial Markets
By Bill Meenaghan, global product manager for Alert, Omgeo
Last month, I looked at some of the data management implications of the incoming sequel to 2007’s MIFID: the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR – see the blog 
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.
By Amir Halfon, Senior Director for Technology, Capital Markets, Oracle Financial Services
In my last post I briefly touched on the subject of unstructured data and schema-less repositories. In this instalment, I’d like to focus on this topic in a bit more detail, and look at the Variety aspect of Big Data from several angles.
Variety refers to various degrees of structure (or lack thereof) within the source data. And while much attention has been given to loosely-structured web data – whether sourced from the web itself (social media, etc.) or from web server logs – I’d like to turn to the topic of unstructured data within the firm’s firewall. I’d also like to focus on the challenge of linking diverse data with various levels of structure, rather than discussing the storage and analysis of unstructured data as a standalone problem.
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I love to be on the inside track, probably because it happens so rarely, and so I am sorely tempted to answer the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) call for volunteers to participate in the private-sector LEI advisory panel that the industry group announced earlier this week. In fact, I haven’t felt quite so tempted since one of our reference data friends suggested I run for the managing directorship of the EDM Council.
But in that case – and most likely in this FSB one – my initial enthusiasm is dashed by two factors: 1) Grandad’s wise words (“Never volunteer for anything, son.”) and, 2) the use of the word ‘Expert’.
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