Alliance Trust Selects Charles River for Equity, Fixed Income Support

Alliance Trust PLC, the largest generalist investment trust listed on the London Stock Exchange, and Alliance Trust Asset Management, have selected the Charles River Investment Management System as a single consolidated platform for its equity and fixed-income operations.

The system will be used by Alliance Trust's investment team based in its offices in Dundee, Edinburgh and London, and supported by Charles River's Application Management service.

Following the expansion of Alliance Trust's investment capabilities into fixed income, Alliance Trust sought a single system to manage both equity and fixed-income portfolios. Charles River IMS provided the solution with a single upgrade cycle to be dictated by Alliance Trust.

Alliance Trust will also be using Charles River Compliance across all asset classes to achieve real-time, pre-trade compliance as well as position level/start-of-day compliance. The solution will provide real-time and complete monitoring of overall exposure across the entire organization.

Katherine Garrett-Cox, chief executive of Alliance Trust, says that in order to generate a return for shareholders over the medium to long term through a combination of capital growth and a rising dividend, the asset manager required a cost-effective, reliable and proven multi-asset class software solution, which Charles River provides.

Jon Steward, managing director for EMEA at Charles River Development, says the Burlington, MA-based vendor has experience of working with similar buy-side firms, allowing it to rapidly respond to new requirements. Charles River is also able to quickly scale up the IMS platform as the firms grow.