Performance measurement vendor BISAM’s just announced acquisition of risk analytics specialist FinAnalytica is a response to growing demands among buy-side firms for a unified performance and risk approach, and industry observers are in agreement that the two disciplines are on a parallel and perhaps intersecting path. BISAM officials are not disclosing the financial arrangements for… Read More >>
Nomura Joins Retreat from Swaps Clearing
Nomura Holdings is getting out of the clearing game for swaps transactions, dropping a previously offered service where the bank acted as a gateway for getting its customers’ swaps trades guaranteed by clearing houses. Nomura is just the latest of several banks to back away from clearing amid low margins and high costs imposed mainly… Read More >>
Big Data Takes Aim at Big Silos
While many financial services firms are making strides in using Big Data technologies to address front office concerns like pre-trade analytics and tailoring the customer experience, the use of Big Data is catching on much more slowly among middle- and back-office operations, industry observers say. However, as more firms begin to wake up to Big… Read More >>
Will Ops Cuts Follow Front Office Layoffs?
Traders on Goldman Sachs’ fixed income, currency and commodities (FICC) desk are likely to be the latest victims of the post-financial crisis reality of a steep downturn in FICC trading profits, according to recent media reports. That reality has coincided with similar cuts at many of the world’s largest banks in recent years, and will… Read More >>
Getting Hired for Ops Gains New Respect
Things have changed in the back office. The operations staff no longer takes an automatic back seat to Wall Street’s big, bad money-making wolves on the trading desk. Not that it’s turned into models ’n’ bottles in operations. But not so long ago, those in operations were widely regarded as the Rodney Dangerfields of the… Read More >>
