The IBM Data Governance Council, which was set up three years ago by IBM and comprises 50 financial market firms, is currently discussing establishing best practices for the industry on how to manage critical financial data. The council plans to build what it calls an “information governance framework”, which will be based on their existing data governance maturity model.

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Aim Software has released a new version of its flagship data management product Gain with extended facilities for golden copy management and new support for Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista. The main drivers behind the upgrade were market and customer requests for new functionalities and to further reduce time to market for customer projects, says Martin Buchberger, head of marketing and sales at Aim Software.

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Global shipping and energy company AP Møller-Mærsk has selected SuperDerivatives to provide independent valuations for its energy options and swaps. Amitai Razon, sales executive for the Nordic region for SuperDerivatives, indicates that the vendor first met Møller-Mærsk in August last year, after which the firm began testing the vendor’s service in February this year.

Telekurs Financial has signed an agreement with Bondweb Malaysia, the Asian country’s only current bond pricing agency, to integrate Bondweb’s fair value prices into Telekurs’ Valordata Feed (VDF) and Intraday Pricing Service (IPS). The deal with the Malaysian agency is part of Telekurs’ strategy to provide greater coverage of global fixed income markets. “Access to a transparent fair value pricing service is crucial to participants in the fixed income market on both the buy side and the sell side,” says Fritz Hediger, head of marketing at Telekurs Financial.

Eagle Investment Systems has expanded its relationship with Microsoft to leverage Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to improve its developer productivity and build more dynamic applications in a faster timeframe. WPF is a framework and tool set for developing smart client applications that are deployable via the internet, which allows developers to create custom controls, graphics, 3D images and animations that are not available in traditional HTML code.

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Fitch Solutions has launched Fitch Risk and Performance Platform, a new platform providing market-based credit risk analytics, credit default swap (CDS) pricing and fundamental ratings content. It is an extension of Fitch’s market implied ratings platform and incorporates new tools for quickly reviewing credit entity performance within a user’s portfolio.

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Reference data projects may be seeing investment this year but data storage in a physical sense is proving problematic during the credit crunch. That is if you look at the take-up in London’s data centre market, which has seen very little investment during the first quarter of this year, according to real estate advisor CB Richard Ellis.

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The US subsidiary of Dutch asset manager APG Algemene Pensioen Groep NV, APG Investments US Inc, has signed up for US domestic fixed income corporate actions information from Fidelity ActionsXchange, via its ActionService product. APG Investments US Inc is the wholly owned subsidiary of APG Algemene Pensioen Groep NV, which provides asset management services to Dutch-based Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP. ActionService, which competes in the corporate actions processing market with the DTCC’s Global Corporate Actions Validation Service, takes in multiple corporate action data sources and detects and reconciles routine data discrepancies. This client win, follows a successful year for the vendor in 2007, during which it increased its number of clients by 32%.

Paul Fullam, principal consultant at XSP, has been appointed as a co-chair of the ISITC Corporate Actions Working Group. In this position, he will collaborate with the group’s members to review ISO 15022 standards and direct enhancements to message content that promote the straight-through processing of corporate actions. Fullam has been an active participant of the ISITC Corporate Actions Working Group since 2005. At XSP, he is responsible for ensuring product compliance with global securities market practice group (SMPG) best practices in corporate actions processing and serves as a liaison with industry associations.

The EDM Council marked its third anniversary during the Sifma Technology Management Conference in New York this month. Since its formation in 2005, the not-for-profit organisation has grown in size from a dozen founding members to more than 50 financial institutions, data vendors, software companies and integration providers. “Today, most firms are actively engaged in managing data as a shared service and understand data quality as the glue that holds business processes together. Data management is rapidly being viewed as an essential horizontal process – alongside IT, operations, and human resources as part of the core infrastructure of financial institutions,” said Michael Atkin, managing director of the EDM Council.

State Street Global Markets has acquired UK reference data provider SSISearch as part of its plan to create a single source of accurate contact information and fully authenticated standard settlement instructions. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. SSISearch operates the settlement directory for CLS members and thus provides asset managers, banks and other institutions with immediate access to verified standard settlement instructions on a 24/7 basis via a secure website or State Street’s Global Link network. Simon Wilson-Taylor, executive and worldwide head of Global Link, State Street, explains: “This acquisition expands our suite of products and is another step in State Street’s strategy to provide neutral, open and integrated solutions that support the entire investment process from pre-trade through post-trade by streamlining communication for institutional investors worldwide.”

Fitch Ratings has selected and implemented LakeFrontData’s Reference Data Factory (RDF) for its securities reference data management platform. The selection of RDF is part of its service oriented architecture (SOA) approach to IT, the ratings agency says. LakeFrontData is providing Fitch with 80 inbound data feeds, and a comprehensive securities data model with over six million securities and a data publication/distribution service via RDF. According to LakeFrontData, its open standards SOA software platform for data acquisition, normalisation and distribution was put into production in 120 days for the ratings agency. Tony Maceroli, managing director of Information Technology at Fitch, explains: “Fitch is very demanding, and we have stringent interoperability, flexibility and performance standards for third party platforms.”

WM Datenservice, a German financial information service provider, and vwd group, a systems provider of financial market data and solutions, are offering all users of the high performance vwd market manager direct access to WM Datenservice’s browser based financial information portal, WM-DatenOnline. Vwd Group customers now have the option of accessing WM-DatenOnline by concluding a license and usage agreement directly through vwd market manager.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued rules requiring large publicly held US companies to adopt extensible business reporting language (XBRL) for their financial reporting by 15 December.

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Broadening the adoption of a standard identifier for business entities, Telekurs Financial has implemented the International Business Entity Identifier (IBEI) codes for its Valordata Feed (VDF) and its financial display Telekurs iD. The vendor has been working on this implementation since June 2007 in order to allow European customers to identify participants in the processing chain of cross-border securities trading via IBEI codes.

Interactive Data has launched its class actions service mapped to the ISO 15022 format as an optional module of FTS, Interactive Data’s securities administration tool. The service is part of the vendor’s Pricing and Reference Data business and is designed to help institutions track, monitor and recover funds resulting from securities class action litigation.

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Data, portfolio valuations and OTC derivatives trade processing vendor Markit has launched a new documentation library that allows financial institutions to post, manage and share compliance, counterparty credit and regulatory documents securely. Called Markit Document Exchange, the new service automates KYC, anti-money laundering and compliance certification processes in order to reduce risk and lower operational costs. It is aimed at both buy side and sell side clients and thus far, five banks and two asset managers have signed up for the service.

Eagle Investment Systems has released a new version of its software aimed at improving workflow and usability in its data management offering. Eagle Version 9.0 includes a redesigned rules editor and features such as the ability to handle multi-leg swaps for derivatives, a pricing option for direct access to pricing information and the ability to modify the system so users can readily access audit information.

BancorpSouth Bank, a US-based commercial bank, has gone live with OTC Valuation’s derivative valuation service as part of its drive to improve its audit and valuation capabilities. The vendor has reported a good start to the year in terms of client interest as a result of the post-credit crunch focus on external sources of evaluated prices.

Data management consultancy LakeFront Data Ventures (LDV) and data integration vendor ReferenceDataFactory (RDF) have merged to form EDM specialist firm LakeFrontData. LDV founder and former SunGard EDM man Dale Richards has become president and CEO of the new company and fellow colleagues and ex-SunGard veterans Marc Odho and Rob Ord have been appointed head of professional services and head of market development and accounts, respectively. Ex-RDF managing director Andy Dilkes has been given responsibility for technology and architecture and his RDF colleague Gary Wright has become head of data and product.