CSG’s New Zurich Floor Enables Cross-Selling

ZURICH--Credit Suisse Group has opened a new trading floor in its Zurich, Switzerland headquarters, adding another floor onto the existing structure and equipping it for cross-asset communication and trading.

The new 5,500 square-meter trading floor can seat up to 800 people, says a spokesperson for the bank. Currently there are just under 500 desks fitted out for global equity, fixed income, FX and derivatives traders, and asset management and private banking staff, with another 250 desks for middle office, risk management, research and trade administration staff.

The spokesperson from CSG says that the new trading floor, which replaces a trading floor built more than ten years ago, provides the investment banking, asset management and private banking units of Credit Suisse Group, including subsidiary CSFB, with the physical proximity to take advantage of cross-selling.

Peter Wiedemeier, vice president of IT at CSFB, says CSFB is committed to streamlining its IT and focusing on cross-asset cooperation. "We used to have product-specific IT," he says. "Now, with the One CSFB initiative, we are focused on cross-asset."

Eileen Murray, Credit Suisse First Boston’s new head of global technology and operations in New York City, reorganized the firm’s IT division at the beginning of April in order to achieve STP, reduce the complexity of platforms and applications, and to reduce costs and time-to-market (TTW, April 22).

Approximately half of the 500 trading desks belong to the investment banking group, and these are divided between equities and fixed income (including FX). The other half belong to asset management and private banking.

The physical environment in the trading room was important to the bank, and keeping PCs off the trading floor was part of this goal. Due to Swiss energy-consumption regulations, it made more sense to locate most of the traders’ PCs off the trading floor, where they can be kept in air-conditioned rooms. The trading floor itself has a cooling system in the ceiling, but not air conditioning. This way, says Wiedemeier, there are no problems with temperature irregularities for either people or technology.

"Ergonomics were really one of the most important challenges. Traders are here to make money and they can only make money if they are comfortable and healthy," says Wiedemeier.

Every desk on the trading floor has a full basic IT infrastructure, and CSFB has tailored the desks to a certain extent, "but only to an extent where we can easily move traders around," says Wiedemeier.

Wey Technology played a large part in moving the PCs off CSFB’s trading floor, developing three new products in conjunction with CSFB (see story, page 5).

The bank did not want to have any PCs under the traders’ desks, partly for energy concerns and partly because the traders move desks so often. It now has capacity for five PCs for each desk in the systems room, and two PCs under the desks. But, so far, the traders have none on the floor. "My mission is to keep them off the trading floor," Wiedemeier says. "The traders haven’t minded so far." Admin, middle-office and research staff have their PCs under their desks, he says; only the traders have them remoted.

CSFB has taken an unusual step to ensure business continuity, placing half of the trading room’s PCs in one building and half in another--on two different floors. The bank’s building consists of six towers, and each tower has a separate power source and separate wiring, according to Swiss regulations. "So business continuity is split equally between the two towers." Data and mainframe centers are also located in separate towers, and are nuclear-proof, says Wiedemeier. The bank’s Horgen backup center is also nuclear-proof. The trading room spans all of the six towers.

The move began on Jan. 18, when CSFB moved 53 support desks. The firm then moved 109 middle-office desks on Feb. 1. Then 186 trading and sales desks were moved on Feb. 22, and a further 331 desks moved on March 22. The final leg of the move took place on April12 with 86 more support desks moved.

The bank has one central IT team for development and support (Business IT) in the trading area, and five teams for specific technology needs (such as operating systems, databases, networks and engineering). The integration project was managed entirely in-house.

"The people who built the floor are also operating it," says Wiedemeier, likening it to a chef who has to eat his own soup.