RISK-MANAGEMENT NEWSFLASHES

Capco acquires Dresdner's ORTOS; Tradition Sydney picks Kalahari's kACE for pricing and analytics; Caterpillar Rolls Out SuperDerivatives for FX options pricing.

Capco acquired Dresdner Bank's Operational Risk Tool Suite (ORTOS), which the consulting firm will market to other banks on a license basis or as an ASP-subscription service. The software, which is being renamed Capco ORTOS, enables financial and non-financial institutions to comply with Basle II operational-risk requirements related to identification, collection and evaluation of operational risk in financial institutions. In addition, certain modules can be customized to satisfy sections 302 and 404 of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Functionality includes the collation of losses through a loss database, evaluation of operational risks through scenario-based self-assessment, monitoring of risk indicators for the daily management of operational risks and calculation of the risk capital required.

Tradition, a subsidiary of Compagnie Financiere Tradition, chose Kalahari's pricing and analytics solution, kACE, for interest-rate swaps, forward-rate agreements and overnight index-swaps pricing at its broker operation in Sydney. Tradition Sydney, a brokerage service for banks and other institutional clients around the world, will use kACE for its primary price-discovery and analytics tool. The tool will cover multiple currencies, including: Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar and U.S. dollar.

Caterpillar Inc. has rolled out SuperDerivatives, the benchmark FX-option-pricing system. Caterpillar is a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines and industrial gas turbines. Other large corporations that use the SuperDerivatives systems are IBM, Ford, Xerox and Alcatel.

Indata introduced enhanced risk-measurement tools within I.M.S. for Windows, giving investment-management firms an integrated approach to risk measurement and analysis. Portfolio managers are able to view risk measures and analytics within the same module that contains their portfolio modeling, rebalancing and compliance tools. Because the risk analytics are being calculated by the same Indata system that performs the portfolio-management functions, data accuracy is insured.