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ASSET MANAGER IMPLEMENTS FRONT- AND MIDDLE-OFFICE TECHNOLOGY

Majedie Asset Management recently selected Financial Models Company to manage its front- and middle-office technology.

Majedie Asset Management Leverages FMC's OMS Solutions for Future Growth

Majedie Asset Management recently selected Financial Models Company to manage its front- and middle-office technology. The London-based firm, specializing in equity fund management for both retail and institutional investors in the United Kingdom, is in the process of going live with FMC's products including FMCModel (portfolio modeling), FMCTrade (trade communications), FMCSylvan (performance measurement) and FMCRecon (client statement generation and reconciliation).

FMC's products provide a necessary technology foundation for the firm, a recent start-up whose inception was only last year, explained Simon Hazlitt, operations director of Majedie Asset Management.

"Investing upfront in these FMC systems was kind of a reflex action," he says. "We had to get a platform that was absolutely top quality on board before clients even thought about looking at us."

Hazlitt and his partners explored vendors including Macgregor and Charles River Development, but he contends that both vendors were "essentially trading systems." He adds that they lacked the more advanced order-management capacity of FMC such as its ability for the order-management systems to send orders directly to Majedie's counterparties, he says.

FMC also had the key capability of modeling, analytics allowing traders to foresee the effects of trades in reference to their portfolios, which neither Macgregor nor Charles River offered to him at the time that Hazlitt evaluated them, possibly because Majedie is U.K.-based, he says.

In response to Hazlitt's claims, a Charles River spokeswoman maintains that the vendor offers an entire order-management system, including portfolio modeling, portfolio management, order routing, order management and compliance.

In addition, Macgregor's Kevin Milne, EVP of sales and service of Far East Asia who is based in the United Kingdom, claims to have never demonstrated the company's order-management systems for Majedie, and argues that Macgregor's leading strengths lie in the area of order management.

Hazlitt adds that FMC's other benefits included a commitment to provide an Application Service Provider to increase scalability as well as coordinate with Majedie's other ASP-based applications such as its e-mail and customer-relationship-management systems.

Majedie Asset Management has been able to make such a substantial technology purchase in its fledgling state because the firm is 70% held by an established U.K. investment company, Majedie Investments, which has long-term asset management views, Hazlitt explains.

"(Majedie Investments) has enabled us to invest up front to get some serious capacity online before we have clients," he says. "It gives potential clients the vote of confidence that we've got the systems to cope with them and they're not a guinea pig."

While various pieces of the FMC systems are still in the process of being installed, the majority of the products are in place and operating smoothly, says Hazlitt. He expects the entire suite to be live by the end of the first quarter, while the ASP should go live shortly thereafter.

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