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.

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.