ElectronicTrading: Fimat USA Chooses Patsystems for Derivatives, and more.

Fimat USA Chooses Patsystems for Derivatives

Fimat USA will install Patsystems' J-Trader as a global platform that the firm is offering to customers in the derivative markets, the vendor announced on Wednesday.

The implementation is the third installation of Patsystems' platform for the Fimat Group, following installations in London last year and in Sydney in 2001, says Patsystems. The current installation will be integrated with the existing deployments and will complement Fimat's existing technology offering to its customers in the derivatives markets in the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Fimat Goup is a member of more than 40 derivatives exchanges and offers a range of global clearing and execution systems for financial futures and options, commodities, equities and equity derivatives, foreign exchange and over-the-counter markets.

FIX Certification Service Enters Production

FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) announced that Phase One of its certification program for the fixed-income community is in production release with selected vendors.

Phase One of the certification program for the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol covers fixed-income products, Treasuries, agencies and corporate securities, and provides certification for pre-trade, trade and post-trade messaging.

Last February, FPL announced the names of the certifiers and began implementing a certification program. Vendors offering certification are Aegis Software, B2BITS, NYFIX and TransactTools.

Brook Path Partners was retained by FPL to build the test suites and scripts in support of FIX 4.4. By June 2004, the test scripts were developed, and by September, the certifiers were deploying these scripts and beginning to cross-certify.

The purpose of the certification program is to provide the fixed-income community with a level playing field in disseminating message information using the FIX 4.4 protocol. It also aims to lower the barrier of entry toward implementing FIX by defining a verified way to transmit information between counterparties.

The certification program will be offered to FPL members free of charge through the selected vendors. According to FPL, the vendors may charge fees for the FIX Certification Services to non-FPL member firms. FPL says it will provide a central listing of each firm's certification status through its Web site, www.fixprotocol.org, subject to each firm's approval. The certification program remains open to additional vendors that wish to become certifiers.

BNY Brokerage to Acquire Standard & Poor's Institutional Broker

Standard & Poor's is selling its institutional brokerage business to BNY Brokerage, according to an announcement by BNY Securities Group on Monday.

BNY Brokerage is forming a strategic alliance with Standard & Poor's that will enable investment managers to obtain Standard & Poor's investment research and corporate data products through execution services provided by BNY Securities Group broker-dealers. Under the agreement, BNY Brokerage will acquire some of the assets and liabilities of Standard &Poor's Securities Inc. (SPSI), the institutional brokerage subsidiary of Standard & Poor's.

Standard & Poor's is selling its institutional brokerage business to concentrate on its core business of providing independent research, data and analysis to investors, according to the release.

SPSI currently provides brokerage services for investment managers who subscribe to various Standard & Poor's analytic and research products. Under the alliance, BNY Brokerage will assume SPSI's client relationships and provide the clients with a wide range of direct-market access and broker-assisted capabilities that offer choice in trading models.

The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is currently expected to close at the end of February.

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Goes Live with Cognotec

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (BTM) went live with the Cognotec Market Rate Management (MRM) system.

For the past four years, BTM has deployed Cognotec AutoDeal solutions to provide automated trading to proprietary clients on the FX@BTM service and also to provide automated pricing to the FXall multibank portal.

BTM is using MRM to provide a single source of bank-specific market rates to various internal bank systems, in addition to the FX@BTM and to FXall.

The launch of MRM provides significant dealing room workflow efficiencies and complete dealer transparency of the rates being provided to all systems that require an FX rate, says Cognotec.

In the past, eFX systems have relied heavily on generic rate feeds, says the vendor. The MRM implementation has allowed BTM dealers to generate a bank rate more accurately and with complete visibility. This gives dealers greater confidence in quoting larger amounts automatically, according to Cognotec.