Operations Newsflashes: Accenture Hires Kirby to Spearhead MRDS in the UK, and more.

Accenture Hires Kirby to Spearhead MRDS in the UK

Anthony Kirby, a veteran of straight-through processing and industry standardization projects, was hired as associate partner and UK regional sales director for data-management services in Accenture's Capital Markets Practice in London.

Kirby will spearhead client development and sales for Accenture's Managed Reference Data Service (MRDS) in the United Kingdom. MRDS provides outsourced, co-sourced and in-sourced reference data cleansing and management for banks, broker/dealers and asset managers.

Kirby will report to UK partner Chris Broyden in London and lead partner for data management services Patricia Tsien in New York. Kirby joins Accenture from SmartStream Technologies where he was director of market management. Kirby previously served as interim head of STP design at Deutsche Borse and global head of straight-through processing at Reuters. Kirby also worked at SWIFT and Merrill Lynch and currently is chairman of the Reference Data Users Group.

Accenture's data management services began in April 2003 after Accenture teamed up with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) to implement the underlying technology for DTCC's Global Corporate Actions (GCA) Validation Service. Under data management services, Accenture also offers MRDS.

Xcitek Enhance Tax Cost-Basis Calculator to Factor in Mergers

Xcitek LLC announced that significant enhancements to its proprietary cost-basis calculator are now available to its Cost Basis Services subscribers.

The service allows users to turn back the clock to derive tax cost basis on securities. The enhanced version now features the ability to factor in merger elections and other voluntary events, a backward reference capability to wade through mergers, acquisitions, splits, spin-offs and distributions to help identify the original issues. It also provides results that not only show the cost basis on the original security, but also on any security that may have emanated from the original.

For example, if the stock were AT&T, the previous version of its Cost Basis Service would only derive the tax cost basis on the primary security. To get cost basis on the Baby Bells, Lucent and other securities, each would have to be entered into the calculator individually. The new version provides the cost-basis on the original, each distributed security (Baby Bells, Lucent, NCR and others) and every security that came out of those as well (Agere, Avaya, Vodafone, etc.).

"The vast majority of investors do not have tax-lot accounting tools tracking the cost basis on their securities," states Charles Price, senior vice president, Xcitek LLC, in the release. "Our Cost Basis Calculator is the most efficient way for their broker or advisor to provide them with this critical information," Price adds.