Buy-Side Technology/Feature
Long-distance infrastructure
For New York-based global hedge fund and investment firm Marathon Asset Management, best-of-breed and off-the-shelf became mutually exclusive concepts early in its development. After identifying a number of crucial advantages in developing proprietary…
Registration redux
For months now, hedge fund industry participants have anticipated greater regulatoryinvolvement by the US government. But while no concrete regulatory requirement yet exists for hedge funds, proposed rules pushing for hedge fund registration under the…
Cloudy concept, clear gains
In an industry beset by acronyms, ‘cloud computing’ has become the latest buzzword and it is yet to be fully understood, let alone implemented, across the buy side. The term means different things to different firms, but it varies subtly to the ASP and…
There will be risk
Energy and commodities markets provided no safe haven for buy-side firms last year. Abysmal performances combined with higher margins and mounting investor redemptions could be chalked up to the fact that 2008 punished the financial industry…
2009: the year of doing more with less
For asset management firms of all shapes and sizes, fresh technology investment is unlikely this year and existing infrastructures will have to be extended to support new business opportunities. But as Joel Clark reports, doing more with less could have…
Fanning the flames
Recent short-selling restrictions introduced by the SEC have seemingly realised hedge fund managers’ worst fears: heavy-handed regulation making little distinction between legitimate and below-board investment tactics, coinciding with the most…
Analysis paralysis
A midst the volatility that has now become the norm in the financial markets, it may seem that the more information available to traders the better. But when it comes to transaction cost analysis, caution needs to be exercised - traders must assess how…
And the winners are...
After much deliberation Buy-Side Technology has announced the winners of this year’s buy-side technology awards; this year’s ceremony was held at the Lanesborough in London and featured 95 entries across 18 categories with a mix of last year’s recipients…
Curse of the Black Swan
Black swan events are few and far between, but when they do occur they are generally memorable occasions. This is precisely what happened during Black Week – from Monday 6 to Friday 11 October – as Asian investors triggered a sell-off that saw the Dow…
Blazing a trail
Since its inception, algorithmic trading has been powered by complex event processing (CEP) technology, designed to allow trading engines to make snap decisions on the basis of streaming data and market events. But although CEP is often perceived as the…
A moving target
Among the myriad bogeymen haunting buy-side institutions in the current nightmarish financial market, the negative effects of trade latency have received a lot of press in terms of lost basis points, market impact, and failed best execution mandates. As…
The back-office battleground
The intensely competitive and lucrative land-grab traditionally associated with the front office has slowly shifted towards the back office. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the portfolio accounting, investor reporting, and in some cases, OTC…
DekaBank fully compliant...after a seven-year wait
DekaBank, one of Germany's largest asset management firms, has completed the full implementation of SunGard's pre-trade compliance module after a seven-year wait.
Seeing the wood for the trees
The nuances between Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Application Service Provision are often misunderstood, although, perhaps not altogether ignored. But while the variations between the two may not be of utmost importance to the buy-side firm accessing…
Moths to a flame
$125, $130, $135... the rise in oil prices shows few signs of abating, and yet the current liquidity and volatility in the energy markets - specifically oil and natural gas - are attractive to any fund or investor wanting to make money. But in the wake…
A northern tale
The wealth management industry has become a happy hunting ground for front-office technology providers who can assist managers in growing their business. When one such vendor deployed its platform to Border Asset Management early last year, it found a…
Spotlight on the sell side
In the world of investment banking, few organisations have achieved the same degree of penetration and trust across the buy side as Credit Suisse. The bank's algorithmic trading suite, known as Advanced Execution Services (AES), is used globally by…