Special Report: Business Continuity Planning, page 9
www.securitiesindustry.com
OCTOBER 27, 2008
NEWS DESK
NYSE Liffe taps Options Clearing
Corp.; NYSE Euronext launches
European best-execution measurement tool; Nasdaq OMX’s new commodities group. PAGE 3
PERSPECTIVES
COMMENT: As Wall Street struggles
to determine how it got into the current debacle, one thing is certain:
Firms will need to change the way
they develop risk management infrastructures and practices.
Merger of DTCC,
LCH.Clearnet
Set to Shake Up
European Scene
PAGE 4
SPECIAL REPORT
Cost concerns and a newly holistic
approach to risk are driving demand
for business continuity planning prod-
ucts and services. The latest factor
pushing the need for BCP technolo-
gy? Market volatility.
“We haven’t seen anybody declare a disaster
due to capacity issues,
but when systems go
down, in-flight transactions are at
risk,” says SunGard’s Jim Grogan.
“Your downtime procedures need to
accommodate such a business disruption.” Also in this report: As BCP
evolves to tackle new problems, disaster recovery is increasingly viewed
as a separate, interrelated discipline;
and turret provider Orange Business
Services on planning logistics. PAGE 9
DEPARTMENTS
TECHNOLOGY : Despite some high-profile deployments, service-oriented architecture is being held back by
competing standards and varying implementations. PAGE 6
Prodiance locates firms’ spreadsheets and assigns risk values
Excel Abuse Running Rampant
Financial firms look to improve spreadsheet controls
BY TOM GROENFELDT
Microsoft Corp.’s Excel spreadsheet application is celebrated among financial firms for its
power and flexibility on the desktop. But those same attributes can
cause problems when it is used as an
enterprise solution.
Earlier this month, Barclays
Capital had to go to court to amend
its acquisition of the U.S. assets of
Lehman Brothers. In reformatting
an Excel file into a PDF for the
U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the
Southern District of New York, a
junior associate inadvertently deleted hidden rows in the spreadsheet
that showed contracts that were to
be excluded from the deal.
Scott Hirth, former CFO of
Ann Arbor, Mich.-based digital
archiving vendor ProQuest Co.,
was recently fined $420,000 by the
Continued on page 18
Tightening Budgets,
Consolidation Could
Re-sculpt Indian
Offshoring Industry
BYCHRISKENTOURIS
Seeking to propel its expansion
into the European market, the
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. Donald Donahue
(DTCC) has reached a non-binding
agreement to acquire LCH.Clearnet. For the London- and Paris-based clearinghouse, the deal could
ensure its continued survival in a
competitive landscape.
Announced Oct. 22, the transaction would see DTCC pay
EUR10 ($13) per share, or a total
of EUR739 million ($950 million),
to create the world’s largest clear-
inghouse. As part of the New York- Roger Lidell
based utility, LCH.Clearnet would,
within three years, adopt DTCC’s Under the deal—definitive
user-owned, at-costbusinessmodel. terms are not expected until
DTCC subsidiary EuroCCP would March 2009— LCH.Clearnet
be consolidated with the newly chief executive Roger Lidell, a
formed LCH.Clearnet HoldCo to former Euroclear board mem-
forge a single European clearing ber, would become CEO of
business. LCH.Clearnet HoldCo while
Donald Donahue, chairman and
CEO of DTCC, takes on the
role of chairman. LCH.Clearnet
will also have representatives on
DTCC’s board, according to the
companies. Though he did not
specify the future role of current
LCH.Clearnet chairman Chris
Tupker, a DTCC spokesperson
said that Diana Chan, Euro-
Continued on page 17
E-mail Archiving Market
TRADING: Targeting smaller banks,
Wall Street Systems has launched an
on-demand post-trade processing utility for foreign exchange and related instruments. PAGE 6
TRADING: Preparing to apply for self-regulatory organization status, the
Boston Options Exchange hires a legal
officer. PAGE 16
DATA MANAGEMENT: FactSet Research is integrating FirstRain’s Web-based research analytics into its market data platform. PAGE 16
People in the News
Company Index
People Index
On the Web
BY REKHA MENON
With financial institutions in
the U.S. and Europe reeling, the ripple effects are being felt
throughout India’s offshore outsourcing industry.
“IT outsourcing decisions by
banks and financial institutions are
getting postponed,” said N. Gana-
p3 pathy Subramaniam, president of
p22 TCS Financial Solutions, a unit of
p22 India’s largest software services
provider, Tata Consultancy Ser-
vices. TCS Financial has more than
240 customers in 80 countries.
At a recent press conference,
officials at Infosys Technologies,
another major Indian IT services
provider, pointed to a slowdown
Continued on page 20
Instinet brings BrokerShare to
Canada; European MTFs
form symbology group.
See Breaking News at:
www.securitiesindustry.com.
Source: Radicati Group
Credit Crisis Probes and Lawsuits Mean
Boom Times for Electronic Discovery
BYCAROLE. CURTIS there is widespread agreement that
With the credit crunch more actions and probes are on the
spawning government in- way. According to a survey spon-vestigations and lawsuits, the emer- sored by law firm Fulbright & Ja-gence of e-mail as a key prosecuto- worski, 43 percent of in-house coun-rial tool means that it is increas- sel at companies with revenues of $1
ingly important for securities firms billion or more predict an increase in
to have effective electronic archiv- litigation next year—much of it re-ing systems in place. The result, say lated to the sour economic envi-experts, is likely to be a spike in ronment. That follows two years of
business for suppliers of technolo- respondents reporting declining law-gy for electronic discovery. suits and regulatory proceedings in
As the financial crisis continues, Continued on page 22
