Taking up the Sell-Side Technology Baton

If you read Dan’s final editor’s letter for SST last week, you’ll have seen that I’ll be taking over this corner of the WatersTechnology website going forward. If you didn’t, well, see the previous statement.

The Dan-shaped hole here on SST won’t be easy to fill, but I’ll do my best to keep you up to date on all the latest technology news, analysis and weekly dose of light heartedness that his columns often brought to the site. We wish him all the best in his new role at Risk.net.

There will be changes. For example, I can guarantee that there will be 100 percent less baseball and American football references, as I don’t understand either sport. You’ll have to go to the Waters Wavelength weekly podcast for that I’m afraid, which our US editor, Anthony Malakian, will be hosting from now on.

For the better part of the last year I’ve focused almost exclusively on the buy side and what ails it (spoiler alert: it’s Mifid II, of course), but now I’ll be turning my attention to the other side of the Street.

While Mifid II is clearly of great significance to the sell side as well, it does seem to me that there is at least a wider view of the horizon, compared to the somewhat narrow focus among asset managers on simply getting to, and surviving beyond, January next year.

No doubt, I will soon be diving headfirst into the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB), which touches on how banks are managing risk and associated calculations, and what that might mean for their technology infrastructures. I’ve delved into the murky world of legacy tech in the past and have heard several first-hand tales of just how costly, thankless and frustrating a job it can be.

In other news, our write-ups from the 2017 Sell-Side Technology Awards are now going live on the site over the course of the week, so do check out this year’s winners, where the issue of FRTB is a consistent theme throughout.

I will leave it there for this week, but do get in touch if you’d like to share your thoughts, have a story for me, or you just want to hear my opinions on the future of Reading Football Club, which I’m always more than happy to share.

John