ING Ousts Baring Sing. Ops Mgr--But IT Plans Remain On Course

Baring Securities (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. has let its most senior operations manager go. The firm has accepted the resignation of Simon Jones, who oversaw operations for southeast Asia. More to the point, he came under scrutiny as head of finance for the firm's futures traders in Singapore. Baring has already selected a replacement for Jones from outside the firm, but the candidate has yet to accept the offer.

In any case, the firm's plans for information technology will remain on course, says Baring Securities executive director in Singapore, Eugene Marais. "It will be business as usual," Marais says. "We've got a big global dealing system that we'll be installing here as planned. That project will continue."

Baring's dealing system is built around Teknekron Software Systems' data distribution architecture and runs on a router-based wide area network. That platform supports a planned suite of homegrown dealing and risk applications (D&IS, 13 March). The information platform and network is scheduled for deployment in Singapore in the third quarter of this year. Under existing plans, the risk applications for the firm's futures trading are unlikely to make it there until much later (D&IS, 10 April).

Along with his operational duties, Jones was charged with directing the finances of the firm's futures dealing organisation in Singapore. As such, he came under fire following the trades in futures and options that nearly cost Baring Group its life last February.

Jones had "stayed away from the office" anyway since shortly after the crisis, says Marais. Jones' ouster came as part of a sweep carried out last Monday by Baring' new parent ING Bank. That sweep removed 21 of the firm's senior managers, who were viewed by the bank that took over Baring as having been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the disastrous derivatives trading activities.

In the months since the crisis first hit, a manager from consultancy Price Waterhouse, Yeoh Won Gin, was seconded to fill the post as general manager for finance and operations at Baring Securities Singapore. Yeoh will return to his duties at Price Waterhouse once the more permanent finance and operations director takes up the mantle.

"We have selected someone [for the permanent job]," says Marais. "But that person hasn't yet accepted our offer." He declines to name the candidate. Marais says the firm doesn't currently intend to reorganize its technology and operations groups in the region. He does say, though, that there could be some changes in geographical division, so that some countries in Asia might be overseen from different centres than at present.

Baring Securities' global dealing system is called Boris, for Baring Order Routing and Information System. Boris carries the firm's order traffic and real-time market data. Boris comprise a software-based router from Teknekron, a database replication engine developed using Teknekron's Transaction Services Manager communications tools and router hardware from Cisco Corp., as well as the proprietary applications that sit on top of Boris.

Locally, the system delivers applications for order entry and trade capture. Teknekron Information Bus carries data to and from dealers' desktops Sun workstations and Microsoft Corp. Windows-based PCs. Some dealers also make use of X-terminals to access information and enter orders. Boris is currently installed at the firm's Tokyo, London and New York offices but has yet to be extended to Singapore.

Baring in London has been working on a suite of risk-management applications that would draw on Boris' order and position management capabilities. But those applications are unlikely to reach Singapore for some time, and aren't scheduled to include the firm's futures dealing for even longer.

"To be frank," a source told at Baring told D&IS last month, "it may have been a couple of years;" (D&IS, 10 April).

In the interim, Baring futures traders have been relying on a DOS PC-based settlement system from Contac Software Engineering Pte. Ltd. called CTMS, along with a series of standalone information services. The Singapore office is able to view position information entered into Boris by other offices via a remote terminal.

Marais says the firm's information technology management in southeast Asia will rest in the hands of Michael Fahy, who has been with Baring in Singapore since its futures trading business was nascent, Marais says. Fahy was traveling and couldn't be reached for comment.

Separately, Simon Loi, who Marais says handled IT and administration prior to Fahy's arrival, left the firm after the infamous derivatives trading incidents. Marais says Loi's departure was not related to that event. "He'd already decided to move on before the crisis," Marais says. Loi couldn't be reached for comment.

Thus far, the other Baring execs in Singapore to leave are financial controller Rachel Yong and James Bax, regional manager for southeast Asia. Price Waterhouse has also loaned a staffer to keep Yong's place, which the firm also plans to fill with a permanent hire shortly.

In Tokyo, no IT or operations departures were announced among the cuts, although Baring last week did say it was accepting the resignations of Hideo Kaneko and Satoshi Yamada, who headed the firm's settlements and futures and options settlement groups, respectively. Neither could be reached for comment last week, which was so-called Golden Week, a holiday in Japan. Robert Hall, who runs Baring Securities' IT in Tokyo, was also unavailable for comment at press time.

The word that Baring's IT projects in the region remain on course comes as no surprise. Despite the scrutiny into the risk-management systems in place at the time of the crisis--and the possibility that ING might find redundancies in the systems used by its dealing organisation and Baring's--ING has decided to leave Baring's technology alone--at least for now. What's more, even though Baring has only partially deployed Boris and its associated applications in Asia, ING Bank here lacks even a video switch to deliver information to dealers. The bank relies on dialup lines to transfer data between sites. ING's IT groups at its two regional headquarters, Hong Kong and Singapore, comprise fewer than a dozen people each. In London, though, ING has decided its dealers should cohabitate with Baring's in a 300-plus-position room that Baring had been designing to combine all its units' dealers.