NEWSFLASHES

ELECTRONIC TRADING

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange signed a multi-year contract with Sprint for voice and data communication services. Sprint will serve as an authorized vendor for CME's DirectLink Program, which allows current or new participants to use their existing network connections to link to CME for electronic-futures trading through the exchange's GLOBEX electronic trading platform, as well as to connect with its Clearing 21 system and market data.

eSpeed, a subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald that develops and deploys electronic-trading technology, reported net income of $8.1 million or 14 cents per diluted share for the second quarter ending June 30, 2003. This is the first time eSpeed's results were reported on a fully taxed basis. eSpeed's total revenues for the second quarter were $39.1 million, 28 percent higher than revenues of 30.6 million for second quarter 2002 (excluding a $12.8 million gain from business-interruption insurance related to Sept. 11 in the second quarter).

A study of financial-trading institutions in the U.S. Tri-State region (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) predicts that firms will be spending about $5.3 billion on trading and related technology during 2003 and 2004, according to Kimsey Consulting, an independent technology market-research company. But the outlook is gloomy, says Kimsey, which reports that 50 percent of firms state they have no plans to invest in new (or upgraded) systems.

Hungarian participants from the Budapest Stock Exchange began trading on Xetra, the electronic-trading platform of Deutsche Borse, which is continuing to expand its global participant network into Eastern Europe. The Budapest Stock Exchange was linked to Xetra for this purpose and is functioning as a so-called Multi-Member Frontend Provider, by making available the necessary technical infrastructure and network for its trading participants. The first five trading participants are: Concorde Securities Ltd., ING Hungary Ltd., Budacash Ltd., Inter Europa Bank Ltd and Erst Bank Hungary Ltd. The sixth participant, Takarekbank Ltd. is trading on Xetra via an Internet connection.

MARKET DATA

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange's Globex trading platform, Clearing 21 system and market-data services will soon be accessible through Sprint. The CME and Sprint have agreed to a multi-year relationship with Sprint becoming an authorized vendor for the exchange's DirectLink program. Using DirectLink, participants can connect to the CME's systems and market-data services via their existing network connections. In addition, the CME's customers will have broadened connectivity through toll-free voice services, global ATMs, frame relay and dedicated Internet Protocol Services provided by Sprint.

Reuters enterprise information will now be available to customers of SS&C, an investment and financial-software vendor. Under a two-year agreement, SS&C's PortPro application suite will include Reuters' fixed-income and equity-reference-pricing data from two of its services. The services, Reuters Datascope Portfolio and DataScope Fixed Income Extractor, provide pricing and cross-reference data, terms and conditions and corporate-action information across global asset classes; as well as bond information for various security instruments, respectively.

Real-time news is being offered to individual investors through an agreement between Money.net and Dow Jones Newswires. The service, called News Stream, is currently available on Money.net and PCQuote.com, a recently acquired portal by Money.net. News Stream is comprised of Dow Jones Real-Time News for Investors, an information feed covering corporate, economic and market events. The service is viewed on a software application specially designed by Money.net, a vendor concentrating in market-data tools.

RISK MANAGEMENT

HSBC Bank USA extended its use of Calypso from Calypso Technology, Inc. to equity-derivatives products, citing cost reduction and faster time to market in its decision. HSBC is already live on Calypso for credit derivatives.

Fitch Risk has launched a new Internal Ratings Validation Service to help financial-services firms bring their internal credit-ratings practices in line with emerging regulatory standards. The package will provide users with both a qualitative assessment of their overall ratings processes, data and methodologies and a quantitative benchmark of their internal ratings results.

Axiom Software Laboratories, Inc., a developer of risk-management and enterprise-data technologies, has chosen to integrate Powerllel Software with its RiskMonitor application to run in a distributed- and parallel-computing environment. This follows Axiom SL's completion of performance testing of Powerllel's software. Powerllel can be used for both simple and complex parallel-computing problems associated with trading- and risk-management applications and supports both "coarse grain" and "fine grain" parallelism.

INVESTMENT TECHNOLOGY

T. Rowe Price recently went live on a fixed-income-trading and order-management system from Charles River Development, a Burlington, Mass.-based vendor. The investment manager is using Charles River Investment Management System to manage $53 billion in fixed-income instruments. The solution includes portfolio management, order management and real-time compliance. Charles River IMS is still in the process of implementation, but one aspect of it, Charles River Trader, is currently being utilized at T. Rowe by 75 fixed-income desks in Baltimore and London.

Gulf International Bank recently implemented SimCorp Dimension, an asset-management system, in the bank's London office. The Bahrain-based financial institution is using the solution to support front-office operations for equities, fixed income, hedge funds and client reporting. SimCorp Dimension also brings together the front and back office on the same database, and automates processes such as cash reconciliation and performance attribution.

OPERATIONS

The Northern Trust Company announced the availability of its Trade Services capability for global institutional-investment managers. Trade Services allows investment managers to outsource various components of back-office post-execution processing for equities, bonds, and foreign exchange to Northern Trust. In so doing, investment managers may realize the cost and trade efficiencies of back-office outsourcing, as well as the flexibility of retaining other key functions in-house, such as maintaining books and records and client-reporting information.

SunGard eProcess Intelligence, an operating unit of SunGard, announced that intelliMATCH EP, its automated reconciliation and exception-processing solution, has been awarded the SWIFT Ready Gold label for the fourth consecutive year. intelliMATCH EP has been accredited for both Reconciliation for Securities and Reconciliation for Cash. intelliMATCH EP, an automated exception-processing solution, provides a matching engine and a common platform for the reconciliation of multiple instruments including cash accounts, securities positions and movements, and trade confirmations and advices.

Also, City Networks, a provider of software and services to the treasury, securities and derivatives markets, announced that the company has received the SWIFT Ready Gold Cash Reconciliation and SWIFT Ready Gold Securities Reconciliation accreditation for its CityNet Reconciliation product range.