Jefferies Hires Six From Banc of America, and more

Jefferies & Company has lured six prime brokerage industry veterans away from Banc of America Securities to bolster its own prime brokerage unit. The group will be led by Glen Dailey, who will serve as head of prime brokerage services.

Before joining Jefferies, Dailey was managing director and COO of prime brokerage services as Banc of America Securities. He co-founded the prime brokerage business at Montgomery Securities before it was acquired by Banc of America.

The five other executives coming to Jefferies also held senior management positions at Banc of America's prime brokerage business unit. John Kunze, Evan Gevarter, Michael Hill, Penn Miller-Jones and Christopher Bianchi all make the move with Daily.

"We see a vast opportunity to meet the needs of small and mid-sized hedge funds who are currently being underserved by Wall Street. ... Integrating this expanded prime brokerage team with our leading equity sales, trading and execution business has huge potential," said Jefferies chairman and CEO Richard Handler, in a release.

Dailey replaces David Conover, who will continue in his role as the firm's head of correspondent clearing.

Tukman Chooses SunGard's IMpower

Tukman Capital Management has gone live with IMpower, the ASP portfolio management solution from SunGard. Tukman invests primarily in large-capitalization stocks and has $10 billion in assets under management with institutional and high-net worth clients.

Sungard's IMpower solution addresses the requirements of investment managers with capabilities for trading, accounting, performance measurement and reporting. SunGard developed the solution to help investment firms to achieve internal and external straight- through processing, the integration of the front- and back-office environments and the automation of the pre- and post-trade settlement cycle.

Firms such as Tuckman use IMpower's real-time processing features to support investment decision making. They rely on its global, multifunctional capabilities to process international investments. SunGard clients also leverage IMpower's straight- through processing to integrate front- and back-office functions, help simplify workflow and speed settlement cycles.

For Tuckman, the IMpower application has provided a marked increase in productivity and has resulted in the growth of managed assets.

"SunGard's expertise, especially in technology and ASP services, has helped our assets grow more than 10 times without additional IT staff," said Scott Rosen, Tukman's CFO, in a release. "With IMpower in place, our firm can continue to focus on providing superior returns and service to our clients."

Bain Using Vantage Framework for Reporting

Bain Capital has implemented two solutions from Vantage Reporting: the Vantage Precision Tailoring Framework and the Vantage Investor component-based software module. The $27 billion investment firm selected the products to improve investor reporting and alleviate the industry-wide pressure to provide increased business processing efficiency and transparency.

The Vantage Precision Tailoring Framework is a software-agnostic layer that provides the foundation for rapid customization of each core module to deliver the functionality firms need without replacing their existing IT infrastructure. A hybrid alternative to internally developed and off-the-shelf software, the combined solutions give hedge funds, private equity firms, funds-of-funds and investment advisers plug-and-play connectivity between proprietary, third party and Vantage's component-based software modules.

Before deploying the Vantage solutions, Bain Capital relied on multiple solutions to track investments and valuations, leading to a multitude of inefficiencies. "After conducting an extensive vendor search, we found no other comparable software solution that could meet our needs," said Susan Lock, vice president, Bain Capital, in a release. "Vantage's solution is a much more efficient and capable software system."

Saad Licenses Financial Studio Platform

Saad Financial Services SA in Geneva has agreed to license Financial Studio from Financial Architects for accounting sub-ledger and MIS, including profitability, budgeting and control modules.

Saad is a service provider to investment companies in the SAD Group. Financial Studio will be configured to interface with Saad's back-office application, accounting and reporting software. Market prices will be taken from a direct Reuters feed, thus enabling Saad to revalue and analyze portfolio performance in real time as well as provide key financial and management information. Financial Studio will provide a platform on which Saad management can make better informed decisions and facilitate growth through enhanced analysis of financial data and identification of performance attribution.

"The management had been evaluating possible solutions for nearly two years and found that Financial Studio from Financial Architects was the application and the vendor they trusted to deliver a platform that not only meets their needs now but also has the capacity to fulfill future requirements," said a representative for Saad, in a release.

The concept of the Financial Architects platform and the integrated approach of the different modules enable innovative financial institutions to quickly implement tactical solutions meeting the overall strategic objectives in financial reporting. The company provides a blend of domain expertise, operational services, and technology solutions that accelerate and facilitate financial institutions' ambition to implement a cost effective and reliable financial management platform.