JEB, there are 4 other ones to name:
IRIS, the successor of the "legendary" profit master, the name stands for interest risk system, is from a private swiss company.
IS-BANK, a product from german software integrator SAP ("the so-called Micerosoft of Europe") traded on the NYSE:SAP as ADR, had run some 2000% the last 5 years but was weak since. IS-BANK should provide financial institutions which use the SAP R/3 general ledger with an integrated solution for their Asset-liability management.
Brady plc. of Cambrigde,U.K , who developed Brady Trinity, the successor of the old Brady trading system of the likes of C*ATS. I think Brady is traded on the LSE.
Merit of Italy did one, but I do not know much of them.
In general, most of the risk management systems are provided by larger integrator companies. As the risks in their business were hard to carry, they are dependent of a handfull of much bigger clients and the financials were dire, they made up for nice acquisition targets or are otherwise integrated in big players:
Reuters bought Effix S.A. of Paris, France and Sailfish to broaden their product range and help Effix to complete Kondor+
SunGard bought Infinity Fincl. Technology (INFN) in Dec 1997 to combine it with their Devon business.
SAP bought a private co to push ahead their development of IS-BANK.
The market is highly competitive and the bigger banks (I visited UBS of Switzerland, Liechtenstein GlobalTrust and various german banks) have also their self-developed systems. Treasury chefs baulk at the high costs for new software as it has become so difficult to earn money on the interest rate business.
The ongoing consolidation in the banking sector is going to further reduce the future customer base.
SDS seems to have good chances so far as they sucessfully expanded their customer base to South-East Asia (named: Korea), thus decoupling from the shrinking European market. SDS seems to have wider customer base than the other co's making them less volatile to sudden entries of new competitors.
C. |
