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Operations Newsflashes: AQR Capital Management Signs On With ActionsXchange, and more

AQR Capital Management Chooses ActionsXchange for Corporate Actions, CreditTrade to Get STP From T-Zero, Headwaters Selects LexisNexis CRM, GoldenSource to Provide Data on Canadian Entitlements, Parlano and Nokia to Build Mobile MindAlign

AQR Capital Management Signs Two-Year Deal With Fidelity ActionsXchange
AQR Capital Management has chosen ActionsXchange, a Fidelity Capital company and provider of corporate actions processing services, as its global corporate actions data partner. In accordance with the terms of the two-year deal, ActionsXchange will provide the investment management firm with coverage of both global equities and fixed income securities through its ActionService product. ActionService processes consolidated and client-specific corporate action records on more than 2.0 million securities.

"AQR's systematic and disciplined approach to quantitative research is essential to our long-term success in investment and risk management," explained Jerry Levine, vice president of AQR, in a release. "Because accurate corporate actions information is a critical part of our investment process, it was important for us to partner with a company that could supply us with the most comprehensive and exact data. ... The bottom line is that this critical function can be scaled to support growth in AQR assets under management without the corresponding costs of additional staffing resources. In the end, saving money for AQR and ultimately for our clients."

CreditTrade to Join T-Zero Platform

Interdealer broker CreditTrade will join T-Zero's straight-through-processing (STP) service. T-Zero focuses on providing "agnostic connectivity" and the benefits of accurate trade capture to the widest range of market participants including interdealer brokers, dealers, buyside firms, prime brokers and service providers.

"Providing STP connectivity to our clients is a core part of our growth strategy," said CreditTrade founder and CEO Paul Ellis, in a release. "By providing connectivity via T-Zero, we are making it easier for our bank clients to prioritize their integration work and thus ensure that our execution platform is most efficiently connected from front to back."

Through T-Zero's STP service, banks receive an electronic feed of transactions they execute through CreditTrade. These include the highly liquid credit derivative indices (CDX) in which CreditTrade is a market leader in the North American market.

T-Zero has already integrated with numerous platforms, allowing market participants to leverage affirmed trade data in multiple downstream systems. T-Zero's "agnostic connectivity" model allows connection to both downstream operational systems such as DTCC and GlobeOp as well as offering broker-neutral connectivity enabling the straight-through-processing of trades to dealers on behalf of interdealer brokers. The electronic connectivity and messaging provided by T-Zero addresses the major inefficiencies in post-trade derivative processing highlighted regulators over the past year.

Headwaters MB Selects LexisNexis Interface Software as CRM Provider

Headwaters MB, a middle market merchant bank, has selected InterAction from LexisNexis Interface Software (LNIS) as its CRM solution. Headwaters advises companies with enterprise values between $20 million and $300 million in investment banking transactions and plans to use InterAction as the front-end software in the continued development of its proprietary relationship database. In addition to its Denver headquarters, Headwaters is rolling out the InterAction product to its offices in Atlanta, Boston and Jacksonville, Fla.

"We needed a system to facilitate firm-wide information sharing," said Paul Janson, president of Headwaters MB, in a release. "InterAction allows our senior bankers to institutionalize knowledge and better track opportunities for business development." Prior to using InterAction, Headwaters MB employees recorded contact details in Microsoft Outlook, creating disconnected silos of information on each individual desktop. The company utilized two other CRM systems but have now upgraded to InterAction.

Headwaters will also take specific advantage of InterAction's Relationship Intelligence functionality, including Who Knows Whom, which allows employees to gauge who has existing relationships with a contact, and the nature and history of that relationship. Additionally, Headwaters is in the process of implementing the InterAction Opportunities module, which will enable the firm to better manage deals and opportunities.

GoldenSource to Offer Canadian Entitlements Data

GoldenSource Corp. and CDS INC. will collaborate to integrate CDS' corporate actions and entitlements data with GoldenSource Securities & Products software. The new offering will support global efforts to improve straight-through processing of entitlements information, streamlining back-office operations and providing financial institutions with cost and operational efficiencies.

Designed to deliver an integrated data management solution to the Canadian securities trading market, this collaboration broadens the GoldenSource Securities & Products offering to financial institutions with Canadian operations or interests. By using SWIFT ISO 15022 message standards, information can be fed into additional systems, removing the need for manual intervention and improving straight-through processing rates.

"Our goal is to leverage the strengths and reliability of our real-time infrastructure by selecting leaders such as GoldenSource, who understand real-time data and can provide a complementary, high-quality data management platform" said Ian Gilhooley, COO, CDS INC. "We are combining our efforts and expertise in entitlements, including corporate actions and distribution events, to develop a quick-to-market practical solution for the speedy publishing of Canadian market information to consuming applications in the time-critical area of corporate actions and entitlements via the SWIFT network or file transfer protocol."

"Our association with CDS helps us to deliver an integrated reference data platform that reduces implementation time and complexity, while delivering accurate, timely reference data on the full range of Canadian debt and equity securities across an enterprise. This is the foundation to achieving an effective enterprise data management strategy," said Paul Kennedy, vice president of product management at GoldenSource in a release.

Parlano Partners With Nokia

Parlano, a provider of persistent group messaging solutions, has entered an agreement with Nokia to license its Intellisync wireless messaging software to build a mobile version of Parlano's MindAlign for use with RIM, Microsoft mobile and Palm devices.

MindAlign Mobile, with expected customer delivery in the second quarter of 2006, will leverage popular mobile platforms and networks to enable MindAlign users to be out of the office and still participate in individual and group collaboration channels, receive alerts, and filter key words or phrases, giving users complete communications access while on the go.

Key features of the new MindAlign Mobile Client include encrypted and secured data, server-based filtering, support for separate contact and channel lists, and sophisticated presence management. "The creation of MindAlign Mobile is an exciting breakthrough for Parlano as we continue to deliver persistent group messaging solutions that our customers require to be competitive in today's 24/7 marketplace," said Parlano CTO Bob Serr, in a release. "We're thrilled to work with Nokia to give MindAlign users the added advantage of access from the road while maintaining security, presence and persistence features."

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