Boston-based investment management firm Eaton Vance has implemented Eagle Investment Systems’ data management and mutual fund performance solution in order to build an investment systems data warehouse. The selection of Eagle’s offering is to support the investment manager’s plans to outsource the servicing of its institutional business to Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) Asset Servicing, of which Eagle is a subsidiary.

READ THE REST

Capgemini’s recently announced reference data management (RDM) services, which include business process outsourcing (BPO), are differentiated from competitive offerings by their flexibility, the consulting, technology and outsourcing provider claims. Capgemini will not be saying to clients, “here’s a solution – take it or leave it”, according to Saleel Nair, its global leader of reference data management BPO services, and is confident that this flexible approach will be successful, despite the fact that outsourced reference data services have to date proved less popular than predicted.

READ THE REST

By Maryann Houglet, Senior Vice President, Strategic Consulting, A-Team Group

In an age of ever-increasing demands for transparency, the spread of alternative investment strategies into the institutional asset management world means major data management and operational pain for more firms – and greater pressure on data and data management vendors to respond

On January 25 2008, SIFMA’s Asset Management Group announced that D.E. Shaw had been unanimously approved as a member. “The approval marks a milestone in that D.E. Shaw is the first hedge fund member of SIFMA,” read the official statement. On the same day, US stock markets closed sharply lower after some recovery, because of fears that, yet again, prominent hedge funds were in trouble.

READ THE REST

Reuters and Paladyne Systems, solutions provider for the hedge fund industry, have announced the integration of Reuters DataScope Onsite with the Paladyne suite of products. Reuters DataScope Onsite provides pricing, factors, terms and conditions, corporate actions, cashflows and analytical data on the universe of asset-backed securities including MBS, Agency Pools, Whole Loans, TBA Pools and MBS derivative products such as CMOs. The joint product offering is a response to an increased demand for comprehensive asset-backed data within the alternative investment industry, the partners say.

READ THE REST

The acquisition of UK mid and back office systems vendor SmartStream for £200 million by the Dubai International Financial Centre (DFIC) – owner of the Dubai Stock Exchange – made headlines for a number of reasons. Not the least of these was the fact that the acquisition came just a month after SmartStream was forced to postpone its initial public offering due to weak market conditions.

READ THE REST

The Bank of New York Mellon is currently analysing the reference data assets inherited from both the Bank of New York and Mellon pre-merger, as part of its efforts to create a “best of breed” platform to support its clients going forward. A decision is expected by the end of this year on what the reference data components of that best of breed platform will be, and on the future strategy for the managed reference data services offering Mellon built around the Eagle platform acquired through its earlier purchase of Eagle Investment Systems.

READ THE REST

DPC DATA has launched a new facility in metropolitan Manila to support growth in its data outsourcing business. A vendor of securities data, DPC DATA also provides offshore data management services. The new location brings greater capacity for data processing, strategic knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and custom IT development, it reckons.

READ THE REST

Northern Trust has successfully migrated the non-portfolio management related investment operations – including data management – of Vontobel Asset Management, the New York-based investment management subsidiary of Switzerland’s Vontobel Holding, to Northern Trust’s investment operations outsourcing platform. As well as handling the investment manager’s data management operations, Northern Trust will provide post-trade execution support, trade processing and settlement, reconciliation, portfolio accounting, client valuations and reporting, foreign exchange, post-trade compliance services and performance measurement.

Broadridge Financial Solutions is seeking to leverage its pedigree in the provision of ASP and business process outsourcing services with an entry into the managed reference data space. Its Global Reference Data Solution offers a fully managed service for capture, scrubbing, storage and distribution of reference data. GoldenSource software powers the service, and IBM – which itself has dipped a toe into data outsourcing in the past with the now defunct Dresdner Bank deal – is the preferred systems integrator.

READ THE REST

Capco has begun a project to re-engineer the technology infrastructure supporting its provision of managed reference data services, and plans to draw on opensource and grid technologies as well as Web Services, to improve integration with its clients’ operations. The provider’s aim is to improve automation and build in greater scalability to the platform, in order to be able to support more clients and improve the cost-effectiveness of its outsourcing proposition. The effort, which started in the new year, is being spearheaded by its recently appointed chief technology officer Richard Bemindt, who counts a stint at GoldenSource among his previous roles.

READ THE REST

The merger of Bank of New York and Mellon Financial Corp. not only creates the world’s largest securities servicing and asset management firm globally, it also brings under one roof two fiercely rival data warehouse providers, Mellon-owned Eagle Investment Systems and Bank of New York-owned Netik, calling into question the future strategy of the firms’ reference data management offerings.

READ THE REST

JPMorgan Chase has taken an “operational hub” approach to centralising reference data for its wholesale business, which has improved efficiencies and reduced costs, with most business units seeing “paypack within one to two years”, said Peter Serenita, chief data officer, JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services, who shared his experience at FIMA 2006 in London earlier this month. The migration of additional business units to the hubs is continuing gradually, with 14 new business units moving their data operations into the hub infrastructure through 2006.

READ THE REST

SunGard is exploring opportunities to apply its managed data service capabilities to the requirements for storing pre and post-trade data under MiFID. The vendor is at the business planning stage and is consulting with customers to establish their appetite for such services. As well as offering discrete data services, SunGard intends to team its data offerings with the Front Arena order management system for use by institutions planning to be systematic internalisers under MiFID.

READ THE REST

The zeal for providing outsourced reference data management solutions that we witnessed this time last year appears to have lost steam, with several of the larger supplier firms admitting that take-up is slower than expected, and some vendors shifting the focus of their efforts.

READ THE REST

London-based provider of descriptive data for the bank payments area, CB.Net, has introduced an outsourced payments reference data service. The new CB.Net Payments Reference Data Service (PRDS) will effectively allow financial institutions to outsource management of their payments data, offloading to CB.Net such functions as sourcing, verifying, validating and normalizing for data required for international cash payments.

READ THE REST

Lending credence to its ‘Powered by’ concept, Goldensource has secured IBM Canada as a client for its data management platform to underpin IBM’s back office processing software.

READ THE REST

Capco is to acquire the security master file platform of Dutch bank ING Group as part of a deal under which Capco Reference Data Services will provide ING with managed data services under a seven-year deal.

READ THE REST

Bloomberg has added access to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), jointly developed by Standard & Poor’s and MSCI Barra, to its Bloomberg Professional market data terminal service. READ THE REST

Soliton Inc. has signed the first round-the-clock client for its managed reference data services offering. The implementation, now live after a three-month evaluation period and three months of training, involves a dedicated Soliton staff handling data cleansing and normalization processes for the investment management division of an as-yet unidentified fund manager in the U.S.

READ THE REST

Large custodian Mellon Financial Corp. has previously dipped its toe in the water of reference data manage-ment through its acquisition of Eagle Investment Systems in 2001. Now it is getting ready to dive in with a packaged reference data management outsourcing solution targeted at investment management firms.

READ THE REST