Profile of Greg MacSweeney

Editorial Director Member Since: 5/8/2014
Author
Blog Posts: 734
Posts: 205

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology.

A Wild Ride Comes to an End

1/27/2015
Covering the financial services technology space for the past 15 years has been a thrilling ride with many ups as downs.

Increasing Cyberthreats Pose Massive Challenge for Financial Firms

1/8/2015
Capital Markets Outlook 2015: Financial firms will increase data security spending and also strengthen critical infrastructure as the industry struggles to keep up with the scale and intensity of cyber attacks.

Technology Innovation Returns to Financial Services

12/18/2014
Capital Markets Outlook 2015: Following a few years dominated by regulatory compliance and cost saving technology initiatives, financial organizations are finally investing in innovative technology and tools.

Global Banks Need to Demonstrate RDA Progress in 2015

12/18/2014
Capital Markets Outlook 2015: As the January 2016 deadline approaches for BCBS 239, also known as risk data aggregation, banks need to make sure they have a definitive RDA plan, and can show regulators they are getting closer to their compliance goals.

Julio Gomez Joins Knowledgent as Industry Strategy Partner

12/4/2014
Julio Gomez, the founder of Gomez Inc., has joined data analytics firm Knowledgent as industry strategic partner for financial services.

BNY Mellon Aims to Tap Data Science Talent In Silicon Valley

12/2/2014
Looking for new ideas and talented data scientists, BNY Mellon has opened an innovation center in Palo Alto.

Fidelity Debuts Oculus Rift-Based Virtual Investment App

11/19/2014
Fidelity Labs, Fidelity Investments' 75-person R&D think-tank, has launched StockCity, a virtual-reality view of an investor’s portfolio. StockCity uses Oculus Rift to simulate the investment cityscape.

Fidelity Labs Launches Oculus Rift Investment Visualization App

11/19/2014
Fidelity Labs, the R&D think tank inside of Fidelity Investments, has launched StockCity for Oculus, a tool that combines virtual reality with data visualization to transform an investor’s stock portfolio into a city that conveys information about stocks without a single number or percentage.

CFTC Increases Cyber Security Oversight for Market Structure Entities

11/6/2014
Tomothy Massad, the new CFTC chairman, tells derivatives exchanges and clearinghouses they need to strengthen cyber security planning and procedures.

RDA Is Wake-Up Call for Data Managers

10/20/2014
Banks need to improve data sharing and risk management to meet RDA standards.

Mobile Trading & Apple's New IPad Top Most Read List

10/17/2014
Mobile trading apps are proliferating in financial services.

CME Layoffs Hit Technology Group Hardest

10/14/2014
CME Group's restructuring will eliminate 5% of the workforce.

Citadel’s New CIO Builds on a Strong IT Foundation

10/9/2014
Citadel has a long history with cutting-edge technology. Joseph Squeri, the firm’s CIO, is happy to leverage its technology platform for newer projects.

The Bankerless Bank

10/1/2014
Regulatory upheaval has distracted banks from developing innovative technology. When will banks return their focus to building technology for competitive advantage?

Get Ready for RDA

10/1/2014
The deadline for Risk Data Aggregation (RDA) is approaching quickly. Is your bank ready?

SEC’s CIO Grows Tech by Leaps & Bounds

10/1/2014
Tom Bayer, CIO for the SEC, has helped the agency improve its systems to better monitor today’s electronic markets.

Raising the Data Management Stakes

9/30/2014
Data management can get firms only so far. Advanced data analytics is needed for all business lines and for calculating risk, especially with BCBS 239 on the horizon.

Big Data Takes Center Stage at Sibos

9/29/2014
Banks are rolling out data analytics projects across the business, but leaders still struggle with data privacy, regulations, and finding business value.

The Future of the CIO

9/29/2014
Today’s chief information officers are no longer hardcore technologists. And they aren’t pure business leaders either. They need to have excellent business and technology acumen to succeed.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Uncover Non-Public Company Data

9/16/2014
Startup DataFox aims to use artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and big data to provide data on 100,000 private technology companies to financial analysts.

Enterprise IT Swings Back to Insourcing

8/25/2014
Insourcing is becoming more common as businesses try to leverage newer technologies and tools to create business opportunities.

Security Beyond the Firewall

7/14/2014
With more and more mobile devices in use each day, the traditional corporate firewall's limits have been exposed.

Innovation Is Hard

6/2/2014
Although everyone talks about innovation, actually doing it requires commitment, funding, and a long-term outlook.

Inside the NYC FinTech Startup Scene

5/23/2014
The financial services entrepreneur scene in New York is growing rapidly. Here is one of the many startup shared offices in midtown Manhattan.

Capital Markets Innovation Is Bogus

5/22/2014
Every financial technology executive talks about innovation, but few actually practice it.

Welcome to the New Wall Street & Technology Community

5/20/2014
For the first time the capital markets technology community has an online destination where they can share ideas and content.

The Great HFT Debate Is Yesterday's News

4/8/2014
If you are still slogging it out over HFT, you are missing the point. The real debate is about market structure.

Capital One Delivers 85% Of Software Through Agile

4/1/2014
Agile software development methods have reduced delivery times to three to six months while cutting costs significantly.

Nasdaq OMX Blazed Datacenter Hosting Trail 10 Years Ago

3/25/2014
Ten years ago Nasdaq OMX moved its matching engines and corporate technology to a Verizon datacenter. The decision turned heads in the financial services world. Today, the practice of utilizing third-party datacenter services is becoming commonplace.

Fidelity Investments Reduces Global Datacenter Footprint By 20%

3/20/2014
Strategy reduces number of data facilities to 20 from over 80 just five years ago.

What Is The Cloud, Anyway?

3/14/2014
Since financial services firms have a high exposure to cloud-based services and applications, it's helpful to know what the cloud is and how it operates. This infographic helps with the basics of the cloud.

New Datacenter Strategies Are Flexible And Just-In-Time

3/13/2014
Financial services IT shops are in the process of moving from fixed capacity datacenters to strategies that stress flexibility, responsiveness and, above all, lower costs.

Thomson Reuters Eikon Now Features Social and News Sentiment Analysis

2/3/2014
Latest version of Eikon also includes desktop integration, Microsoft Office integration and auto-suggest for search.

SunGard Hackathon Produces Algo Trading, Visualization and Security Apps

1/31/2014
Over 425 SunGard developers participated in a global 48-hour hackathon to develop new tools and ideas for SunGard clients.

Centercore: A New Flexible Datacenter Approach

1/29/2014
Rather than build massive datacenters that take years to fill, Fidelity Investments has developed Centercore, an incremental, standards-based datacenter design.

Centercore: The Flexible Datacenter

1/14/2014
Fidelity Investments develops a modular datacenter that can grow at 500 kilowatt increments.

Rethinking The Financial Services Data Center

1/13/2014
Shifting market dynamics, cost pressures, and maturing technologies are forcing financial services organizations to re-examine their love affair with the traditional datacenter.

Financial Services Datacenter Strategy 180-Degree Shift

1/9/2014
Data centers have quickly shifted from the crown jewel of financial services IT to a costly technology albatross.

Community Chatter: Most Commented Articles of 2013

12/31/2013
When community members start commenting on an article, the comments usually come in bunches. This year articles about cybersecurity, high-frequency trading, Elizabeth Warren and big data generated a lot of interest and comments. Here are the articles you were talking about in 2013.

Bloomberg Aims To Ease Instant Messaging Compliance

12/17/2013
Following rate rigging scandals where traders used chat rooms to communicate, Bloomberg consolidates messaging compliance tools for clients.

Big Data For Intelligent Trading?

11/18/2013
Technology has almost advanced to the point where trading strategies can use big data without negatively impacting latency.

CFTC's Gensler Says LIBOR Is Based On Fiction, Not Fact

11/6/2013
After praising the industry's work to complete 65 final CFTC rules to implement Dodd-Frank, Gary Gensler takes aim at LIBOR and says the industry needs to change.

What's In Store For 2014?

11/4/2013
Although markets continued to surge in 2013, this year was mostly a forgettable one for financial services technologists. CIOs are hoping for brighter IT fortunes in 2014.

Open Source Hardware Becoming A Reality

11/1/2013
With budget pressures mounting, financial services firms are turning to user-developed open source hardware standards to help manage enterprise IT costs.

Good Luck Finding A Data Scientist

10/31/2013
If you are in the market for a data scientist, chances are the search will be long, difficult and costly.

2014: More Compliance Mandates, Or A Return To Innovation?

10/29/2013
Capital markets CIOs hope that 2014 will allow IT organizations to start working on projects that provide business value, rather than just meet compliance demands.

TradeMonster Celebrates 5-Year Anniversary

10/28/2013
TradeMonster, the online retail brokerage that launched during the height of the financial crisis, celebrates its anniversary with $5 commissions.

Wall Street's Bonus Outlook Brightens

10/23/2013
Globally, financial services workers expect larger bonuses, although US-based employees are less optimistic.

Bloomberg Tradebook Like You've Never Seen It Before

10/18/2013
Bloomberg Tradebook held its second annual Charity Day on its trading floor in New York. Sean "Diddy" Combs, CC Sabathia, Mark Messier and other celebrities attended the charity fundraiser/costume party to help raise over $1 million in commissions for six different charities.

Microsoft's Capital Markets Focus: Azure and Windows 8

10/10/2013
Microsoft Azure is gaining steam with enterprise users and it could help capital markets firms transition to cloud.

8 Major Banks Join Instant Messaging Initiative

10/7/2013
Markit is powering the new industrywide federated IM platform with Thomson Reuters' backing. Where does this leave Bloomberg?

The IT Brand Is Broken

10/3/2013
In order to repair IT's reputation, technology leaders need to understand the business and become the first choice of users, not the last.

Fintech: Crisis Brings Innovation

9/26/2013
In the years since the financial crisis, companies have worked to find open source alternatives to enterprise hardware, such as servers, switches, sensors and data storage.

IT Is The Business

9/23/2013
Much like its peers do with complex financial products, Bank of America's technology infrastructure team "marks to market" its technology offerings.

JSE Reduces Latency, Launches Colocation Service

9/23/2013
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange reduced latency by relocating matching engines to its own data centers.

Banks Face Big Data And IT Talent Shortage

9/19/2013
Financial services IT expertise is hard to find and locating data scientists is all but impossible, say speakers at SIBOS.

Is The NSA Hacking SWIFT?

9/16/2013
SWIFT says it has no evidence its systems were breached, but documents show SWIFT and Visa are targets of the NSA, according to media reports.

The Bite Of New Market Realities

8/26/2013
As trading volumes plummet, exchanges are looking for new sources of revenue. One of the most popular new sources is technology.

Small Firms Facing Increased Regulatory Scrutiny

8/21/2013
Regulators make small firms jump through the same data backup hoops as their larger peers.

Thomson Reuters Eikon Adds Cleartrade Exchange Data

8/20/2013
Thomson Reuters Eikon to provide real-time data for the commodity futures and OTC cleared derivatives markets from Cleartrade Exchange.

Performance Measurement Investment To Increase 6.9%

8/19/2013
Facing investor demands for greater transparency, asset managers will ramp up performance measurement spending through 2017.

SWIFT On Track to Cut Messaging Costs By 50%

8/15/2013
SWIFT, which is also expanding into other messaging technology services, is half way to reaching is cost cutting goal by 2015.

1,300 FXall Customers Get Access to Eikon Messenger

8/5/2013
Thomson Reuters extends Eikon Messenger to FXall's foreign exchange customer base.

2014 IT Spending To Increase Slightly

8/2/2013
Banks of all sizes indicate they will spend more on IT in 2014, with more allocated to innovation and discretionary spending.

Hacktivism: Defending Against The Unknown

7/11/2013
In addition to protecting themselves against hacktivists, banks need to be wary of state-sponsored cybercrime as well as espionage.

Gold Book Focus: Innovation And Leadership

6/28/2013
Since the 2005 inaugural edition, 120 capital markets technology leaders have been tabbed as Gold Book Honorees. Who will be honored this year?

Tradier Launches Cloud Brokerage In A Box on FinQloud, AWS

6/17/2013
Running on Nasdaq OMX's FinQloud, Tradier's cloud brokerage solution could eliminate need for data center space for smaller financial providers.

Trading Talent Disconnect on Wall Street: Is It Really a Lack of Qualified Workers?

6/13/2013
If no one is investing in their employees or providing training, where will the next wave of talent come from?

Valuable Assets: Skimping on IT Training Is Costly

6/11/2013
Employees need career development, training and more, but most companies fail to deliver adequate training once they’ve made the hire.

IT Innovation? Nothing Has Changed In 50 Years

6/11/2013
The founder of a software company says that software development methods have not evolved as quickly as technology, and corporate IT is at fault.

Pershing Previews Next Gen NetX360 Mobile App

6/4/2013
The new NetX360 mobile app is a hybrid native/browser app that takes advantage of many built-in iOS features.

Nasdaq OMX To Enhance Performance Monitoring with CorvilNet

6/3/2013
CorvilNet will monitor operational performance across trading platforms to improve transparency, reduce risk and increase regulatory compliance.

With Job Candidates Lacking Skills, Wall Street Turns to Boot Camps

5/31/2013
Despite spending $100,000 on an education, graduates still need to take spreadsheet analysis courses. Shouldn't schools teach students how to use a fundamental business tool?

CFOs Increasingly Cite Technology As Critical For Success

5/24/2013
Big data, analytics and reducing IT maintenance costs are all priorities for CFOs, according to study.

Bloomberg Releases FX Chat Tool To Meet Compliance Demands, Gain Efficiencies

5/23/2013
FX market participants can use IB Dealing to negotiate prices and can integrate chat data with Bloomberg's FX trading platform.

Surprisingly, Financial Services Workers Achieve Work-Life Balance

5/22/2013
Study finds that U.S. workers have been able to achieve a work-life balance, but still feel like they are underpaid, according to an eFinancialcareers.com survey.

Fidelity NetBenefits App Provides Mobile Access to Benefits and Retirement Accounts

5/17/2013
New mobile app provides a look into Fidelity workplace and personal accounts.

Bloomberg Spygate Lights Up Twitter

5/17/2013
News that Bloomberg allowed its reporters to access certain Bloomberg Terminal client data sent the Twitter world on fire. Then, news broke that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan had contacted Bloomberg asking for an explanation, which fanned the flames. Here are some of the most interesting Tweets about the Bloomberg snooping scandal.

test

5/14/2013

Financial Conduct Authority Selects Nasdaq OMX SMARTS Integrity for Market Surveillance

5/14/2013
FCA will use market surveillance technology to monitor financial transactions across asset classes.

Big Data Could Transform Global Financial Markets

5/10/2013
Analytics unlocked by big data technology could change the way that financial services firms do everything from asset allocation to customer service, according to a report from BNY Mellon.

OpUSA Cyber Attacks: More Bark Than Bite

5/8/2013
Hundreds of smaller sites hacked or defaced, but financial institutions, government agencies and companies reported little disruption.

Nasdaq OMX Now Offers Packet Capture Trading Data Through QView Latency Optics

5/8/2013
Users can now see minimum, maximum and average packet capture (PCAP) latency data for trade orders on Nasdaq OMX QView Latency Optics product.

Financial Services Trust Index Debuts

5/7/2013
New quarterly TRust Index leverages proprietary data, analytics, news and social media sentiment to help determine confidence in the world's financial institutions.

Cloud Adoption Rapidly Gaining Speed in Financial Services

4/29/2013
Many banks no longer want to run, support and maintain technology and prefer the speed and flexibility of cloud solutions.

Industry Inertia Hampers E-Trading

4/28/2013
Institutional traders see some value in fixed income electronic trading, but a lack of a regulatory push and the desire to maintain existing business models is causing inertia in the move to electronic trading methods.

American Century Names New Head of Quantitative Research

4/26/2013
American Century names former BlackRock/BGI exec Vinod Chandrashekaran as head of quantitative research.

ConvergEx Names 30-Year Industry Veteran as CEO of UK Broker-Dealer Unit

4/23/2013
Joseph Cangemi, who is a member of SIFMA's Equity Markets and Trading Committee, will head ConvergEx Limited in London.

Linear Investments Selects TradingScreen’s TradePrime EMS/OMS

4/17/2013
London-based investment management firm selects TradingScreen’s buy side front-office solution including EMS, OMS and risk functionality.

Nasdaq OMX FinQloud R3 Meets SEC/CFTC Regulatory Requirements, Say Consultants

4/15/2013
Two separate studies of FinQloud's record keeping and record retrieval solution say the technology will meet stringent regulatory demands.

Explosive Data Growth Has Financial Firms Seeking Data Center Efficiencies

4/12/2013
With 50% annual growth rates in data, financial services organizations are struggling to handle the volume. Some firms are turning to flash memory to improve efficiency and lower costs.

UBS appoints Oliver Bussmann as Group CIO

4/12/2013
Former SAP and Allianz executive named as group CIO of UBS.

Financial Services Specific Cloud Offerings Continue to Increase

4/10/2013
More service providers are offering cloud solutions tailored for financial firms, as costs drop and regulatory concerns are addressed.

New Applications for Commercial Lending May Help Banks Increase Profitability

4/8/2013
Misys is the latest technology provider to offer improved functionality for commercial lending institutions.

Isn't HFT Getting A Little ... Nuts?

3/28/2013
In the HFT game, the number of big-time players seems to be thinning. What can firms do to capture a piece of the shrinking HFT pie?

Omgeo adds Goldman, State Street and DTCC Executives to Board

3/27/2013
Edward Hazel of Goldman Sachs, Richard Taggart of State Street Investment Management Services and Susan Cosgrove of DTCC Join Omgeo Board of Managers.

Mobile First Development Changing Trading Platforms in Forex Market

3/26/2013
OANDA's newest mobile app responds to demands from mobile traders for functionality that matches or exceeds traditional desktop capabilities.

Inside the World's Largest High Rise Data Center

3/22/2013
A new 1 million square foot high-rise data center in an old Verizon switching building at 375 Pearl Street opened this week. Here is a view of some of its features -- in pictures.

World's Largest High-Rise Data Center Opens in Downtown New York City

3/21/2013
At 1 million square feet, Sabey Corp.'s data center at 375 Pearl Street will provide data infrastructure services to New York's growing high-tech sector.

Shorter Settlement Cycles Coming to US?

3/20/2013
The EU's move to T+2 will force the US markets to a shortened settlement cycle (SSC).