Mainelli Professes

We are delighted to announce that Michael Mainelli has been appointed Professor of Commerce at Gresham College, London, with effect from August 2005. For those of us who followed the snail-like progression of Michael’s dissertation and resulting PhD over a period of well over a decade (!), this hugely prestigious appointment comes in somewhat of a rush (and surprise), just several months later. The change of title from Doctor Mainelli to Professor Mainelli is a welcome one, however, as many friends reported that they thought “Doctor Mainelli” was an expletive rather than a title.

Michael will deliver six lectures a year over his three-year professorship. The over-arching theme of Michael’s programme will be Society’s Commercial Choice – Risks and Rewards of Markets. Michael believes that as “choice” becomes the distinguishing characteristic of 21st Century commerce, the way in which society and markets interact becomes more important.

Z/Yen is particularly pleased with this appointment. Not only does it confer a superb honour on Michael personally, but it places Z/Yen’s beliefs at the centre of innovative commercial thought. Rumour has it that Michael and Ian feel another book coming on; perhaps containing 18 lectures?

The lectures are open to the public, with the first at 18:00 on 19 September. Z/Yen will be encouraging friends of Z/Yen to attend, probably with some liquid bribes to assist their edification. In the meantime, please contact Michael Mainelli for further details or look at the Gresham College website later in the summer.

Yeandle Compresses

Z/Yen, with help from Sun Microsystems, the London Stock Exchange and several leading investment banks has just started a major research project, “Best Execution Compliance Automation”, investigating the automation of anomalous trades using dynamic anomaly & pattern response based around Z/Yen’s prediction system, PropheZy.

New EU regulation, the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID), will soon require banks to demonstrate that they achieve best execution when dealing on behalf of clients. Prices achieved are often not the best published price available at the time with price differences due to order size, significant market fluctuations, poor liquidity or information leakage. What is needed is an analytical approach that ‘sifts’ through trades and identifies the truly anomalous for further investigation.

If our research indicates that DAPR approaches work, then low-cost systems can be installed rapidly for UK equities. Moreover, if successful, this technique can be used in other markets, asset classes and jurisdictions than UK equities. If regulators accept automatic identification of anomalies, the savings on compliance costs throughout the entire financial services industry will be enormous.

Significant interest in the research has already been shown by reputable journals and financial services organisations. Anyone trading London Stock Exchange non-SETS equities commercially should contact Mark Yeandle immediately to get in on some exciting research.

Express Presses

It seems that Z/Yen is getting more and more press on a whole variety of topics. Mark Yeandle got trade coverage on Best Execution Compliance Automation. Ian has been speaking on credit unions. Michael and Stephen Martin feature heavily in The Economist of 19 May’s banking survey for their article “Why Bother to Be Better? Strategically Stagnant Personal Current Accounts”. Then Michael gets in the FT on 9 June about online betting. Jeremy gets us in the same FT issue and Institutional Investor lauding CSFB as the leading pan-European brokerage firm in our Operational Performance of Brokers study. Then Jeremy and James Pitcher start the PACE studies – Performance Analysis of Client Efficiencies – where they are seeing what brokers think of their clients on the buy-side, with the hope of more press. So Michael winds up on Channel 4 News on 15 June, again about online betting and the big poker flotations.

However, our sympathies go to our overseas readers. We realise that many of you fled these shores in order to avoid such intensive coverage of Z/Yen when you could get the distilled version from this superior newsletter. Unfortunately for Michael’s American relations, he turned up on the American Public Media radio programme, Marketplace - “Fleet Street’s New Bankers” (19 May 2005) about the “Wimbledon effect” in the UK financial services industry. We suspect that quite a few car radios were abruptly turned off on interstates across the USA in order to await this edition of Now & Z/Yen. Many thanks to our devoted readers.

Z/Yen Impresses

Well almost..., Z/Yen hosted a table for its clients at the prestigious 2005 Thomson-Extel Awards aka the City Oscars. The reason was this was the presentation of the first ever Z/Yen Best Pan-European Brokerage Firm Operations Award. The winner in 2005 was CSFB, closely followed by Merrill Lynch and DRKW. The awards were reported extensively in the financial press.

Z/Yen Confesses - It Ain’t Cricket – At Least The Way We Play It

We realise that many of you also count on Now & Z/Yen for the latest Z/Yen cricket news. We held our annual match with The Children’s Society this month. They won, but we came second. Enough said…