BOAT Consortium Selects Business and Technology Partners
London, 22 January, 2007 - "BOAT", a consortium of nine investment banks launched to address regulatory changes in the financial markets with respect to pre- and post-trade market data provisions, today announced its selection of Cinnober Financial Technology ("Cinnober") as technology provider and Markit Group Limited ("Markit") as business partner. Cinnober will provide the software that will form the basis of the BOAT platform and will supply hosting and operational services; Markit will manage substantially all the business operations of BOAT.
Cinnober is a provider of state-of-the-art technology for marketplace systems, post-trade management and trading applications, all based on the TRADExpress platform. Markit is the leading industry source of independent data, portfolio valuations and OTC derivative trade processing for the global financial and commodities markets.
BOAT was initiated to help reduce market participants' costs by providing the pre- and post-trade reporting facilities required of investment firms as a result of the European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive ("MiFID"), which will come into force on 1st November 2007. BOAT will provide services to European equity dealers and will collect, validate, store, manage and distribute the requisite quote and trade report data over a robust, real-time platform that will enable them to meet regulatory requirements.
BOAT will create a unique database of trade information that will be valuable to both sell-side and buy-side organisations in developing trading and investment strategies. BOAT plans to provide access to this database via market data vendors. The BOAT platform will be open to all market participants in order to help them achieve MiFID compliance in pre- and post-trade reporting. It is planned to recognise the value of contributed data within the commercial arrangements to be put in place with service participants.
Duncan Paterson, Managing Partner of Cygnet Consulting, speaking on behalf of all consortium members, said: "The consortium is pleased to announce the appointment of Cinnober and Markit as technology and business partners to BOAT. Both companies have proven excellence in their given fields, and we look forward to working with them to provide the European markets with a MiFID-compliant platform. BOAT will allow financial institutions to meet MiFID's trade reporting requirements in an increasingly regulated and competitive business environment."
Lance Uggla, Chief Executive Officer of Markit, commented: "We are very happy to have been selected by BOAT, an initiative which will be central to the European markets once MiFID comes into play. It has always been Markit's goal to bring transparency and operational efficiency to the financial markets, and we are excited about our role in this new chapter." Jan Arpi, Chief Executive Officer of Cinnober, stated: "We are delighted to have been chosen to provide the technology and operational services for BOAT in the face of stiff competition. We look forward to applying our deep knowledge of financial transaction technology to provide BOAT with a next-generation solution to meet the forthcoming MiFID requirements."
- Ends -
For further information, please contact:
Cinnober:
Jan Arpi, CEO
Email: jan.arpi@cinnober.com
Telephone: +46 850 304 798
Cygnet Consulting Limited on behalf of BOAT:
Simon Tizard, Senior Consultant
Email:simon.tizard@cygnetconsulting.co.uk
Telephone: +44 20 7826 4323
Markit Group Limited:
Teresa Chick, Director - Corporate Communications
Email: teresa.chick@markit.com
Telephone: +44-20 7260-2094
About BOAT
BOAT is a consortium of nine leading investment banks (ABN AMRO, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS) that was launched in September 2006 in order to create a central platform for the collection, collation, validation, storage and distribution of pre- and post-trade information as required by investment firms operating off-exchange as allowed under MiFID.
For more information see www.boat-project.com
About Cinnober
Cinnober is a provider of core technology to trading markets within the financial, energy and commodity sectors. Cinnober currently serves a number of leading markets with mission critical systems. These include the American Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, Euronext.liffe and Borsa Italiana.
Cinnober's products are highly customizable and based on "TRADExpress" - a scalable, high performance, low latency platform for transaction processing. TRADExpress is 100% Java based, enabling Cinnober to supply solutions that are both flexible and hardware and database independent.
Cinnober is a recent winner of the prestigious "Super Gazelle" of the year award from the Swedish business publication Dagens Industri. This award was given as a result of Cinnober being the fastest growing company in Sweden in the period 1999 - 2003, during which time the company enjoyed growth of more than 800%.
For more information on Cinnober Financial Technology see www.cinnober.com
About Markit Group Limited
Markit Group Limited is the leading provider of independent data, portfolio valuations and OTC derivatives trade processing to the global financial and commodities markets. The company receives daily data contributions from over 70 dealing firms, and its services are used by almost 1,000 institutions to enhance trading operations, reduce risk and manage compliance.
Markit's position in the derivatives markets has been acknowledged by the industry with numerous awards, including awards for innovation from IFR and Risk.