RISK-MANAGEMENT NEWSFLASHES

FNX launches real-time Treasury Blotter; Iris gets funding from APAX Partners; Research companies launch study to reduce processing times for analystics.

As an upgrade to its Sierra product-line, FNX Limited introduced the real-time Treasury Blotter, which is designed to be a central source of information and risk analysis, reducing the normal delays in consolidating cross-product exposure for on and off -balance-sheet instruments. The Treasury Blotter offers trades a consolidated view of positions and cash needs for FX cash, money markets, loans/depositors, fixed income, exchange-traded products and interest-rates derivatives. Among the decision-support tools included are gap analysis, yield-curve sensitivity and graphical representation.

Iris Financial Engineering Holdings Ltd., (formerly known as Iris Financial Systems), received $11 million investment from APAX Partners Funds. The developer of component-based real-time trading and risk-management-solutions, also appointed Michael Laven as chief executive officer and Robin Phillips as CFO, both of whom are based in London. Laven was previously CEO of Infinity Financial Technology and following that, president of The Trading and Risk Group at SunGard Data Systems after its acquisition of Infinity. Iris has a 12-year-track record in building global trading, decision support and risk management solutions for investment banks. In addition, it delivers applications developed with its new Java/J2EE Component Service Architecture which is in production at 10 global banks.

NLI Research Institute, a company of the Nippon Life Insurance Group, recently began a joint research project with IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory to reduce processing time for the company's financial risk-management solution. NRI is using Monte Carlo simulation through the use of grid technology. Early results have reduced processing time from then hours to 49-minutes according to abroad announcement of IBM's global grid computing projects for banking and financial markets.

The Professional Risk Managers International Association (PRMIA) named Paul Gwee, a senior vice president with United Overseas Bank, and Sai Sireesh, a managing consultant with Reuters Risk Practice as co-regional directors for PRMIA Singapore.Gwee and Sireesh will be taking over the helm of PRMIA's seventh largest chapter from Phang Hong Lim, who was one of the twenty-five founding members of PRMIA and a Board Member since inception. Gwee is a senior vice president of risk management 7 compliance at United Overseas Bank (UOB) Group and is the secretary of the bank's asset liability committee (ALCO). His responsibilities encompass balance-sheet management (capital optimization), interest-rate risk, liquidity risk and market-trading risk. He has also managed the credit and country risk and operational risk-management for the Singapore and major overseas center operations. Sireesh is a managing consultant with the Reuters Risk Management in Singapore. He is currently responsible for complex enterprise-wide risk engagements for financial institutions in Asia.