Friday, December 17, 2004

Calypso Ranked Best Front to Back System for Credit

San Francisco, 17 December 2004 – Calypso Technology , Inc. a leading provider of cross-asset front to back trading and trade processing systems, announces that it has been ranked the best front to back system for credit derivatives in Risk magazine’s inaugural Technology Rankings.

Readers of Risk magazine participated in an online survey of technology vendors and nominated systems they were either using or were familiar with. Calypso also scored highly in the trading systems – credit category.

Additionally, Calypso has been included in the first annual FinTech 100 compiled by the American Banker and Financial Insights. The ranking of technology companies was based on revenue generated by the financial services industry.

“ The Risk ranking demonstrates Calypso’s ongoing success in the rapidly expanding credit derivatives market and further cements Calypso’s position as the market-leading vendor solution for automating credit derivatives trading and processing, ” said Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso Technology, Inc. “We are also thrilled to have been included in the FinTech 100 ranking. This highlights the strength of our organisation and we look forward to improving on this in the future.”

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Hedge Fund Company FrontPoint Partners Signs with Calypso

San Francisco, 14 December 2004 – Calypso Technology, a leading provider of cross-asset front to back trading and trade processing systems, announced today that FrontPoint Partners LLC, a $4 billion integrated investment management company, has selected Calypso as a trading system for its business.

FrontPoint will use Calypso for various fixed income and credit-related trading strategies. Along with the core trading capabilities, the Calypso product will be integrated with FrontPoint's administrators and prime brokers as well as order management and existing risk management systems.

Breadth of product coverage and a strong working relationship with Calypso were key to FrontPoint's selection.

"Our investment strategies cover products areas such as derivatives, which are not adequately addressed by technology catering to the buy-side. We wanted to work with a firm that understood the market and our needs, and had the right product functionality that would support our growth," said John Hagarty, CIO of FrontPoint. "We selected Calypso as we saw them as a partner, not a vendor."

The win at FrontPoint comes on the back of other recent wins for Calypso in the hedge fund industry and the company expects to see more growth in this area.

"The hedge fund industry is in a time of change. Recent growth in capital inflows, competitive pressures and new investment strategies have made firms revisit their existing infrastructure. Calypso's integrated solution is well positioned to service them and we are looking forward to meeting the needs of our growing customer base in this market," said Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Calypso Expands Globally with Several Key Appointments

San Francisco, 25 November 2004 – Calypso Technology , a leading provider of cross-asset front to back trading and trade processing systems, announced today that it has made numerous appointments globally due to increased client demand and significant growth in 2004.

“We’ve experienced dynamic growth across all regions this year, having signed clients such as, SunTrust Bank, M. Safra, NewSmith Capital and LCH Clearnet. The expansion of our support team has been instrumental in helping to deliver successful implementations for existing clients, including Citigroup and Sumitomo Trust & Banking,” said Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso Technology. “The recent appointments are key to Calypso’s growth and we will continue to build on our in-house expertise with more strategic appointments going forward.”

Overall, headcount increased by 46% throughout 2004 and Calypso has recently made several key appointments in the US , Europe and Asia Pacific:
  • In addition to increasing client support with several appointments, Calypso has expanded its sales team in the US with the hire of Larry Cenci as Senior Sales Executive in New York . Larry joins from ADP, where he served as global account manager. As Senior Sales Executive, Larry will drive sales in the region. Larry was president of Leading Edge Technologies, prior to its acquisition by ADP, and brings over 20 years of experience with fixed income capital markets systems to Calypso.
  • Calypso has also increased its presence in Asia Pacific, with the appointment of Sean McDermott as a Tokyo-based sales executive for the region as well as making new hires in the support team. Sean joins from Wall Street Systems, where he served as Country Manager for Japan and has been brought on board to accommodate increased customer demand in Asia .
  • In Europe , Naoko Fader brings 11 years of experience of financial markets to Calypso’s European sales team and a strong background in fixed income and credit. Naoko joins from Iris Financial.
  • Robert Finnell has been appointed as a General Counsel in Calypso’s San Francisco headquarters. Robert brings over 19 years of experience as inside legal counsel to rapidly growing private and publicly-held technology companies and was formerly Vice President, General Counsel, and Assistant Secretary of PeopleSoft, Inc.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Industry Survey Finds System Upgrades Necessary to Support Credit Derivatives Growths

San Francisco, 10 November, 2004 – Calypso Technology , a leading provider of cross-asset front to back trading solutions for the capital markets industry, today announced the results of a survey of the global credit derivatives markets. According to the survey most leading organisations believe their current technical infrastructure will not support the growth in their credit derivatives business over the next five years.

The study, which canvassed over 100 risk managers, traders, operations and IT staff at financial institutions globally, discovered widespread anxiety over the scalability of current systems. Respondents defined improved product coverage and risk reporting as key areas in the need for improving credit derivatives infrastructure. Some of the key findings are as follows:
  • Many firms are preparing for business growth: 58% said their organisation was in the process of upgrading their infrastructure with a further 13.5% planning to upgrade in the next one or two years. Only 10.8% had no definite plans to upgrade their technology.
  • Key drivers cited for investment in credit derivatives technical infrastructure were making improvements to product coverage, risk management and upgrading technology.
  • When questioned about the capability of their current infrastructure to handle the necessary innovation in credit derivatives trading, only 20% were satisfied with how quickly new structures could be added, while 46% were dissatisfied with the ability for integrated cross-product trading.
  • 90% of respondents placed importance on real-time risk analysis in a credit derivatives infrastructure. Hedge recommendations and direct links to reference entity data were also considered to be very important in a credit derivatives infrastructure, while matching between sales and traders also featured high on the list.
  • In response to questions about credit events, only 21.9% of respondents’ organisations were able to track all trades either on demand or immediately. Using several disparate systems to track credit exposure was considered by 88% to impact on their firm’s ability to effectively process a credit event, with 65% of respondents considering this impact to be either medium or high.

“This survey highlights the importance of a holistic approach to credit derivatives systems. For any significant player in the market, the requirements of the technical infrastructure across all dimensions are considerable. These range from performance and scalability, to product coverage across a dynamic and structurally innovative landscape, standards compliance, post-trade processing and automation, and credit event management,” comments Mas Nakachi, Senior Analyst at Calypso Technology. “The challenge of managing all of these dimensions in an integrated fashion has created a need for the next-generation of credit derivatives systems .”

The credit derivatives business is expected to enjoy continued growth over the next year. As expected, the largest growth in volumes looks likely to occur in single name CDS with 82% of respondents predicting an increase. Over half of the participants also predicted growth in more complex credit derivatives structures, including synthetic CDOs.

The survey was conducted in conjunction with Risk magazine.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Sumitomo Trust & Banking Live on Calypso's FX Solution

San Francisco, 13 October, 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that Sumitomo Trust & Banking ( STB ) has gone live with Calypso’s front-to-back FX solution. The implementation enables STB to enhance its IT infrastructure for its FX business and improve customer service and processing efficiencies.

STB explored several options to satisfy its FX business strategy, provide more effective customer service , and improve operational efficiency . Calypso was selected as it was a single system providing complete STP through settlement, which would allow STB to improve the efficiency of its FX processing . To help STB achieve its service goals , the system now has various features including trust FX, bulk entry of trades, rollover and allocation of trades, and margin control and limit management. To ensure that the system met Japanese market requirements, Calypso partnered with STB to complete support for Japanese market requirements.

A spokesperson for Sumitomo Trust & Banking, says: “Calypso has supplied us with a single platform for both interbank and customer FX trading, with supporting functionalities for both the front office and back office. We have now enhanced the infrastructure of our FX business with an automated system, built on modern technology, and have an opportunity to improve the efficiency of the FX business. This is our first step using the Calypso system to enhance our business infrastructure, and we are expecting further improvements to meet our business strategy goals and to provide better service to our clients.”

“In a market where margins have become very tight, banks need to be able to provide end to end connectivity for its customers to offer better customer service. They need to connect to liquidity providers, portals and banks. This is achieved by providing banks with a single platform to support the connectivity. In addition it reduces their need to use many systems which increases the potential for operational risk and higher maintenance costs. We have built a robust platform for the entire FX process which leverages all Calypso’s technology benefits,” said Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso Technology.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Rand Merchant Bank Goes Live on Calypso

Atlanta, 12 October 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that South Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) has gone live on the Calypso system for payments. The bank has licensed the Calypso system for cross asset coverage and is in the process of implementing the system for other product groups.

RMB sees Calypso as the right technology platform for the bank to support future business growth.

"Calypso fits well into the RMB technical architecture. Written in Java and designed for flexibility and customization it gives us a solid financial framework to work from,” said John Murray – RMB Technical Architect.

“The implementation of Calypso provides us with better control and enhanced efficiency, allowing us to support our current and future business needs in a cost effective manner,” added Wendy Donaldson – RMB, Treasury Operations.

RMB is Calypso’s first client in South Africa.

“RMB is well known for innovation in South Africa, which makes them an ideal partner for us to work with. We are looking forward to building our relationship further with them,” said Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso.

About Rand Merchant Bank
Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) is the investment banking arm of FirstRand, one of South Africa’s largest, publicly quoted financial services groups. RMB is a full-service investment bank with offices in South Africa, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Mauritius and Australia. RMB has enjoyed uninterrupted profit growth since its formation in 1977. Independent surveys consistently rank it first in corporate finance, structured finance, private equity and as the leading debt house in South Africa.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Calypso Launches Enhanced FX Module to Provide Complete Automation from Client to Settlement

San Francisco, 11 October 2004 – Calypso Technology announces today that it has launched an enhanced version of its foreign exchange (FX) module. Calypso’s FX system provides complete and seamless automation between bank customers, sales and trading desks, and the institution’s back office. The system is built to increase a bank’s profitability by providing effective sales management tools while lowering trading costs and reducing operational risk.

“With e-commerce initiatives driving down spreads in FX markets, banks are faced with the challenge of maintaining strong customer relationships to drive their business growth, while having to drastically reduce costs in their operations,” says Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso.

Calypso’s FX solution is a single system supporting client management, sales, multichannel pricing and deal capture, interbank trading and back office capabilities. A new web based client interface, WebFX, allows clients to enter trades via the internet. The system also provides connectivity to EBS, Reuters 3000, portals such as FX Connect, and liquidity providers. Other added features include customer service tools such as bulk entry and pricing of client trades and trade allocations.

Volume growth is supported downstream by Calypso’s award winning back office. The highly scalable back office, in use at banks such as HSBC and Dresdner, is completely integrated with the sales and trading capabilities of the system. The solution supports numerous messaging standards and actively assists in reducing operational risk with its exception based workflow processing. The Calypso system ensures that as business grows, banks will have a modern robust platform to execute the volume of trades.

Marston comments, “Innovation in the FX markets has come in the form of distribution. Banks can drive more sales through the e-commerce channels now available. While multibank portals have specialized in client distribution and traditional vendors have focused on interbank trading, Calypso’s approach is to streamline the entire process, by which crucial costs can be removed. We have looked at the FX business holistically and designed our system for automation with corresponding scalability.”

The FX module enables FX and FX options to be traded in a single system and is part of Calypso’s total, multi-asset solution, which consolidates all treasury, derivatives and securities products on a single technology platform.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

TD Securities Picks Calypso for Credit Derivatives

San Francisco, 30 September 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that TD Securities, part of the TD Bank Financial Group, has selected Calypso as its global platform for credit derivatives trading and operations.

The solution will be rolled out to support trading activities in London, Toronto and New York as well as all risk and back office processing.

About TD Bank Financial Group
Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with more than 51,000 employees in offices around the world, The TD Bank Financial Group (TDBFG), offers a full range of financial instruments and services to approximately 13 million customers worldwide. TD Bank Financial Group had more than CDN$274 billion in assets. TD Bank Financial Group ranks as one of the top on-line financial services providers in the world with more than 4.5 million on-line customers. The TD Bank Financial Group (TDBFG) trades on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges under the symbol "TD".

Monday, September 6, 2004

NewSmith Capital Partners Selects Calypso

San Francisco, 06 September 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that NewSmith Capital Partners, a London based Hedge Fund Company, has selected the Calypso system for supporting their Credit and Fixed Income Operations.

NewSmith has licensed the Calypso system for cross asset coverage and is in the process of implementing the system for its Credit and Fixed Income funds. Nick Senn at NewSmith Capital says; "We conducted extensive research before choosing Calypso. Calypso clearly stood out as the market leader for Credit Derivatives and we feel comfortable that Calypso will provide us with a cutting edge technology - which will allow us to better service our clients."

NewSmith joins a growing number of hedge funds that will be using Calypso as their trading platform.

Wachovia Expands Calypso use to Energy Derivatives

San Francisco, 06 September 2004 – Wachovia Corporation will be expanding their use of Calypso to include Energy Derivatives. This is the fourth asset group that Wachovia will be trading on Calypso. The bank is currently live on Calypso for credit derivatives, interest rate derivatives and foreign exchange options.

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Citigroup Goes Live with Calypso for Credit Derivatives Technology

San Francisco, 01 September 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that Citigroup is now live on Calypso's front office for credit derivatives trading. Calypso will support the bank's global credit derivatives business as it increases in volume and complexity.

The key goals of the new implementation are to provide increased controls, straight through processing, and on demand risk to the business and support the bank's growing volumes and new product innovations. With Calypso, Citigroup will be able to significantly enhance time to market for new credit products, scale its credit derivatives business and get faster risk results globally. The single front office system covers trade capture, pricing and risk, while providing real-time scenario analysis and P&L information across the business.

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Calypso Selected by Suntrust for Derivatives Trading

San Francisco, 19 August 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that Suntrust Bank has selected Calypso for interest rate and credit derivatives trading. The Calypso system will support the derivatives products in the front-middle- and back-offices.

About SunTrust
SunTrust Banks Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of the nation's largest commercial banking operations. As of June 30, 2004, SunTrust had total assets of $128.1 billion and total deposits of $85.5 billion. The company operates through an extensive distribution network primarily in Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee, Virginia, and the District of Columbia and also serves customers in selected markets nationally. Its primary business include deposit, credit, trust and investment services. Through various subsidiaries the company provides credit cards, mortgage banking, insurance , brokerage and capital markets services. Visit SunTrust at http://www.suntrust.com/.

Monday, July 19, 2004

LCH. Clearnet to Use Calypso

San Francisco, 19 July 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that the Calypso system has been selected by LCH. Clearnet to handle a risk management process for its SwapClear service.

About LCH Clearnet
LCH. Clearnet is the leading independent CCP group in Europe, serving major international exchanges and platforms, equity markets, exchange-traded derivatives markets, energy markets, the interbank interest rate swaps market and the majority of the Euro-denominated and sterling bond and repo markets. It aims to serve as a catalyst for further CCP consolidation in Europe.

With a major global reach, the corporate vision for LCH. Clearnet is to become the partner of choice for CCPs and international markets around the world.

Monday, July 5, 2004

Calypso Becomes First Trading System to Integrate Mark-It RED

San Francisco, 05 July 2004 – Mark-it Partners Ltd. ("Mark-it"), the world’s first integrated daily pricing service for global credit derivatives, cash credit instruments and syndicated loan pricing, today announced that Calypso has integrated Mark-it RED data into its core technology. The aim of the partnership is to provide financial institutions with greater automation in the trading of credit derivatives and reduce risk by lowering the number of failed trades from inconsistent data.

Calypso is a leading provider of credit derivatives trading and risk management technology to the world’s largest financial institutions. The integration allows data from RED, which has been adopted as the market standard for reference data in the credit markets, to be incorporated directly into Calypso’s system, giving users the ability to place trades using the standardized reference entities and reference obligations.

Mas Nakachi, Senior Business Analyst at Calypso, said, ”Having access to accurate reference entity data is a major challenge in the credit derivatives markets today. Mark-it RED is invaluable in providing the transparency and consistency that firms require to conduct their business accurately and efficiently. This integration is an important enhancement for Calypso and our mutual clients will gain tremendously from this joint initiative.”

Penny Davenport, Director of Mark-it RED, said, “We are able to leverage Calypso’s strong technology framework to incorporate RED so that trading desks can benefit greatly from the direct access to Mark-it’s standardized reference entity and reference obligation data. Firms are looking for seamless, integrated solutions for their credit trading businesses and the partnership between Calypso and RED provides exactly that.”

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Calypso Wins The Banker Technology Award for Second Consecutive Year

San Francisco, 10 June 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that it has been awarded the 2004 Banker Technology Award for Back Office Application of the Year. The Banker, a publication of the Financial Times Business Group, launched its annual technology awards in 2003, to recognize technology vendors in the financial markets. This is the second consecutive year that Calypso has won this award.

“Calypso’s back office application continues to set the standard for systems, both in terms of technology and functionality. Calypso’s clients are able to realize real gains from the system, which was key in our consideration of all the candidates. Calypso takes a fresh approach to the challenges faced by operations teams and continues to enhance its application to eliminate the users pain points. Calypso is only one of two repeat winners of our technology awards and we commend them highly for this achievement,” said Parveen Bansal, Technology Editor for The Banker.

“With the innovation in the financial markets today, operational infrastructure has become more strategic in nature. Leading banks cannot afford to have their back office systems restrict their ability to grow the business. In addition to providing cost efficiencies, a back office must be scalable and flexible. We built Calypso’s back office application to serve as a platform for growth for our clients, and are very pleased to be recognized for our efforts” said Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso Technology.

About The Financial Times Business Group
Financial Times Business is part of the Financial Times and Pearson Plc. Established in 1926, The Banker provides global financial intelligence to the international banking and finance community. Published monthly, each issue delivers news and opinion on the latest developments in both the retail and investment banking sectors. With regular software and technology updates, new product innovations, country profiles and expert market commentary from leading industry figures, The Banker is essential reading for all banking and finance professionals.

Friday, June 4, 2004

Calypso Launches Enhanced Credit Derivatives Trading Solution

San Francisco, 04 June 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that it has launched Calypso 7.0 with increased functionality for credit derivatives trading. Calypso 7.0 enables banks to manage increasing volumes and innovation in the credit derivatives market by empowering them to make effective decisions, manage risk and understand exposure in real-time.

Calypso’s technology provides an integrated view of pricing and risk and allows banks to increase credit derivative trading volumes and monitor positions. Calypso 7.0 can be scaled to manage the significant volume of market data unique to trading credit instruments and supports the complexity of structuring and trading hybrid products. Calypso’s front-to-back platform enables straight through processing (STP) of trades and better management of workflow between traders, sales and the back office. The integration of credit derivatives functionality with Calypso’s leading cross-asset platform allows traders to hedge credit derivatives against other instruments, such as fixed income products.

Calypso 7.0 supports a range of credit derivatives products, including:
  • Hybrids
  • Index and Basket Trades (including Tranched Index Products) - Traders can capture a trade and calculate exposure to the continually changing basket of underlying names.
  • Resecuritisations – including CDO Squared.
  • Synthetic, Managed and Static CDOs
  • Swaps – including Single Name Credit Default Swaps, ‘Nth’ Default Swaps, Asset Swaps and Total Return Swaps.

“Fuelled by continuous innovation, credit derivatives are the most dynamic instruments in finance today and banks are seeing significant profitability in this area,” says Charles Marston , CEO, Calypso. “The market has grown so rapidly and to such volumes that existing systems have come under strain and market players are recognising the need for trading technology specifically designed to support these complex products. The credit derivatives market has seen significant growth over the past year alone and will only continue to accelerate. We are committed to providing out-of-the-box technology that is flexible enough to react to market changes and adapt to new trading instruments and are excited about the launch of Calypso v7.0.”

Additional system enhancements include integrated front office functionality to support FX trading and back office support for US fixed income products.