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Special Report: Applications of Reference Data to the Middle Office

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Increasing volumes and the complexity of reference data in the post-crisis environment have left the middle office struggling to meet the requirements of the current market order. Middle office functions must therefore be robust enough to be able to deal with the spectre of globalisation, an increase in the use of esoteric security types and complex investment strategies, as well as rising transaction volumes. This has led many from the buy side and the sell side to consider outsourcing strategies for some of these functions, offshoring, in-house development or the acquisition of new vendor technology.

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08 Mar 2010
 
Reference Data Review Special Report: Enterprise Data Management, 2010 Edition

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Enterprise Data Management 2010 The global regulatory community has become increasingly aware of the data management challenge within financial institutions, as it struggles with its own challenge of better tracking systemic risk across financial markets. The US regulator in particular is seemingly keen to kick off a standardisation process and also wants the regulatory community to begin collecting additional data in order to better supervise systemically important financial institutions.

So, data is definitely on the regulatory radar and the Fed itself has been investing in its data infrastructure, including adding ex-Citi chief data officer (CDO) John Bottega to its ranks. If data collection and aggregation is required for regulatory reporting purposes then surely enterprise data management (EDM) is an obvious part of that endeavour?

Find out more in this special report.

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05 Mar 2010
 
Special Report: Connecting to Today’s Fast Markets

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connectingLow latency connectivity has enjoyed a resurgence of interest as high-performance trading architectures become a reality. Early interest in the low-latency ‘vision’ may have been interrupted by the global financial crisis, but no matter: low latency is back, and providing the catalyst for the explosion in high frequency trading.

As liquidity continues to fragment – in the US and globally – electronic trading operations are demanding connectivity to a broader array of execution venues. As well as traditional exchanges, traders today need access to alternative trading systems, including electronic communications networks, dark pools and multilateral trading facilities (MTFs). Securing and maintaining a robust, high-performance connectivity solution is key to providing comprehensive market access.

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19 Feb 2010
 
Trading Beyond the Horizon: Fragmentation Drives Multi-Market Execution

A new industry briefing from A-Team Group and CFN Services

CFN Whitepaper 01 10 150x210In 2010, financial markets participants will continue to expand their trading activities as liquidity increasingly becomes fragmented, seeking alpha in new markets, best execution in dark pools, arbitrage opportunities across the order book and by implementing high frequency and complex, multi-leg, cross asset class strategies.

The successful operations – whether they be the proprietary desks of traditional broker/dealers, specialist high frequency and algorithmic traders, or quantitative hedge funds – will leverage a trading infrastructure that combines high performance analytical, algorithmic and order routing platforms with the lowest latency access to multiple, geographically dispersed execution venues.

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28 Jan 2010
 
Risk and Regulation IT Special Report: Coping with the Risk Management Challenges of Global Regulatory Change

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It seems that risk management is never far from the minds of the boards of financial institutions at the moment, given the increase in regulatory and client scrutiny of this space in the post-financial crisis environment. In order to meet the slew of regulations on the horizon, firms are being compelled to invest in their risk management systems to keep on top of their exposures, be they credit, market or liquidity related.

Regulators such as the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) are directly endeavouring to place more emphasis on firms’ risk management practices. As well as its liquidity risk reporting regime, the introduction of new remuneration guidelines are aimed at curbing reckless risk taking within financial institutions. All of these are a case in point for increasing the power of the risk function.

Accordingly, the profile of the risk function within financial institutions has gradually risen up the ranks in terms of priority and power, and many more firms are taking the decision to appoint a chief risk officer (CRO). The regulatory community has indicated that CROs should eventually have clear enterprise-wide authority and independence, with tenure and remuneration determined by the board.

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30 Nov 2009
 
Industry Briefing & Survey: Harnessing Data for Better Valuations

A new industry briefing and survey report from A-Team Group and GoldenSource

A-Team Group, a publishing and research company specialising in financial information technology, was commissioned by enterprise data management specialist GoldenSource to conduct research into the challenges of managing pricing and valuations data.

Throughout the course of October 2009, A-Team Group researchers interviewed senior-level specialists closely aligned to market data or valuations. Several spanned multiple responsibilities including oversight of client data, product information, and trading risk.

The interview sample was spread across asset managers (52%), Tier-1 and Tier-2 banks (32%), broker/dealers (11%) and custodians (5%).

Geographically, participants were dispersed across the United Kingdom (47%), Europe (21%), and the United States (32%). Over half of the respondents had global responsibility within their organizations.

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19 Nov 2009