More than 350 users of risk-based software products voted FRONT ARENA the best in credit and equity trading systems as well as the top in credit and cross-asset trading analytics in Risk Magazine's first Technology Rankings survey published in its current December issue.
With four No. 1 wins, the FRONT ARENA solution from Front Capital Systems, an operating unit of SunGard (NYSE: SDS), finished in the top three rankings in a total of 12 categories.
"More and more operational departments are looking for unified, flexible, open technology to drive their business development," said Stephen Butcher, COO of Front Capital Systems. "The roles of vendors, IT departments and operational departments are shifting once again, leading to a need for richer business-based dialogs. Our ongoing migration to service-oriented architecture will soon be bringing you easier integrations, extensions and upgrades, removing well-known drawbacks, such as dependency on skilled programmers, external development tools and long development times."
For information on how Equity and Credit markets are growing together contact John Mooren, Director, SunGard Front Capital Systems (and ex Head of Credit Trading at Hypo Vereins Bank). John, who can be contacted via Beverley Weber on 020 7544 3062, is responsible for equity and fixed income/repos and is particularly knowledgeable in hedge funds and credit derivatives. Subjects which John is well placed to talk about include:
- the increased popularity of valuation models like Credit Grades or KMV
- the increase in hedge funds with Credit Arb strategies
- the increase in vendors offering platforms covering both asset classes
- how the tightening of spreads has increasingly forced people to look at structured credit risk (e.g. CDO) and how that poses challenges for software vendors.
- electronic trading
- how credit derivatives are changing the way banks do business
- new products eg Credit Index, Recovery Swaps
For information on the latest advances in technological thinking including service-oriented architecture contact Nils Unden, Vice President Architecture and Technology, SunGard Front Capital Systems. Nils too can be contacted via Beverley Weber on 020 7544 3062. Subjects which Nils is well placed to talk about include:
- Service Oriented Architecture - how to achieve scalability and variability in technology solutions allowing banks and financial institutions to 'future-proof' their investments over time
- Open source and Linux - moving away from proprietary 'black-boxes' to increase control and lowering Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for banks and financial institutions
- GRID processing -opening up endless scalability of computing power, allowing banks and financial institutions to run more advanced calculation models - a step towards the 'real-time enterprise'
FRONT ARENA came first in the following categories:
- trading systems - credit
- trading systems - equity
- trading analytics - cross asset class
- trading analytics - credit
second place in:
- trading systems - cross asset class
- trading systems - rates
- trading systems - structured products
- trading analytics - rates
- front-to-back office - credit
- front-to-back office - structured products
third place in:
- operational risk - structured products
- front-to-back office - rates
