MCTR news
Mercator Announces Global Securities Solutions Initiative; Provides
Straight Through Processing Integration to Securities Firms Worldwide
LONDON and WILTON, Conn., Dec 4, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Mercator Software, Inc.
(NASDAQ: MCTR) announced today the creation of a product team to deliver Global
Securities Solutions to the financial services sector. The new team, Mercator
GSS, will have international responsibilities for the development and rollout of
a one-stop Global Straight Through Processing (GSTP) integration package for
securities firms worldwide.
The team will be led by Andrew Muir, who has been named director, Mercator GSS.
Mr. Muir, who has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services
industry in both marketing and technical positions, joined Mercator in 1995 from
Thomson Financial Services, where he played a key role in the launch of OASYS
Global, the world's leading electronic trade allocation and acceptance service.
Prior to that he headed investment management systems development at Fidelity
International and helped establish the standards for Electronic Trade
Confirmation in London as a member of the original Industry User Group.
Mercator Chairman and CEO James P. Schadt said, "Andrew has developed successful
transaction automation strategies using messaging technology both within the
company and throughout its global client base. He is ideal to lead this
important initiative."
Andrew Muir said, "The global securities industry is preparing for T+1, an
initiative demanding full settlement of trades one day after the trade date,
while at the same time attempting to cope with dramatic increases in transaction
volumes. Global Straight Through Processing (GSTP) is a vital component of a
high-volume, T+1-enabled operation, providing the infrastructure needed to
connect all players and all systems."
Mercator GSS is designed substantially reduce the time, cost and effort to
integrate financial transactions with both front-office and back-office
applications across the GSTP landscape. Mercator GSS brings together the proven,
best-of-breed transaction management capabilities of Mercator's financial
services integration broker offerings, and several new components that enable
rapid deployment of new, real time GSTP architectures.
The launch of Mercator GSS will coincide with the introduction of the GSTPA
Transaction Flow Manager (TFM), a critical component of the GSTP architecture
defined by the Global Straight Through Processing Association (GSTPA). TFM is
scheduled for pilot testing April 2001. Mercator GSS includes real-time
integration with the GSTPA TFM, a real-time facility for message repair, message
tracking, and error processing, and Mercator's ISO15022 metadata repository,
which provides full architectural compliance with the new SWIFT guidelines for
securities transaction processing.
Mercator customers in the US are responsible for more than forty percent of US
SWIFT category 5 securities traffic. Mercator customers also handle more than
fifty percent of domestic UK securities settlement transactions via CREST (the
UK's Central Securities Depository) and more than sixty percent of Nordic SWIFT
category 5 securities traffic.
Demonstrations of Mercator GSS will be held at a series of workshops in the US,
Europe, and Asia. |
