Raising Interest

Z/Yen’s range of Operational Performance studies on the services provided by investment banks have generated wide interest this past year with client presentations in Hong Kong, New York and London and numerous press articles.

Additionally, the results have been presented to a number of industry-wide forums including the Asia Broker Forum, the Scottish Operations Forum and the London Client Forum. Z/Yen’s first 2006 Operational Performance Survey covering Foreign Exchange, commences in March with Listed Derivatives following in April. Z/Yen are also collaborating with MA Partners to produce an overall global report.

Comply With Compliance

"Best Execution Compliance Automation” is hardly the most exciting project title, but Z/Yen have completed an enormous, exciting project with Sun Microsystems and the London Stock Exchange to test the feasibility of identifying share anomalies using PropheZy in order to help financial firms comply with the best execution requirements in the European Union’s Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID – pronounced like TRiFFID, hmm). The project, BECA as we call it, built a prototype compliance workstation that has been a huge success with four brokers - “The prototype workstation, with all the information about each trade and the drill- down functionality is just the sort of tool we would use”. The work involved sifting 190,000 trades worth around £54 billion and asking PropheZy to say which ones looked odd (could have told ya about the team before you started – ed). BECA will feature in two June articles for the Journal of Risk Finance, is on display at Sun Live and has already been trailed in Banking Technology.

Other applications for PropheZy grow almost daily. PropheZy has recently been tested on the prediction of inbound call volumes to a call centre, the identification of trademarks that are likely to be refused registration and the identification of counterparties to equity trades. Much to the frustration of after-hours staff, it still fails to predict the lottery...

Odd Jobs

Z/Yen’s expert resourcing division SpecialiZm continues to provide our clients with experts for special projects. We recently provided an expert in economic capital and Basel II to assist an organisation with a project on compliance with European regulation. Similarly, an expert in technical architecture and the implementation of large scale, high-availability and highly-scalable secure systems was deployed to advise on the development and testing of a new IT application. A third recent assignment was the
provision of an expert in the design, implementation, and evaluation of financial control systems to a trading company to help evaluate the use of key performance indicators. If you have any requirement for expertise, however ‘out of the ordinary’, give Mark Yeandle a call – even if you don’t have an Equity card.

Social Engagements

First and foremost, our congratulations go to Francesca on her engagement. In other Society Page news, we hear rumours of Linda’s plans for a move from “The Sty” (not quite “The Shire” in Lord of the Rings) to “Paradise”. Naturally, our friends at CityAxis are handling the project. Apparently Paradise is a few thousand square feet on the other side of the wall. Paradise has clean desks and open spaces, massage chairs at each plush workstation with quad plasma screens, a ‘silver service’ lunchroom, the waterfalls (yes!) flow with milk and honey and the aquarium has to be seen to be believed ... Well, we hear the pounding anyway and may have a welcoming cocktail party in a few months. Finally, Michael (Prof) Mainelli’s first year of Gresham lectures draw to a close with number six – “How Can You Have Too Much Choice?” on Monday, 15 May 2006, 18:00, Barnard’s Inn Hall – followed by a Z/Yen drinks reception. Attendance is free, don’t miss it, choose to come.