INVESTMENT-TECHNOLOGY NEWSFLASHES

Barra increases securities and benchmarks for fixed-income system; LatentZero connets trading, compliance systems with NYFIX.

Barra, a Berkeley, Calif.-based risk-management vendor, has increased the number of securities and benchmarks to the newest release of its global fixed-income portfolio-management system, Cosmos. In addition, Barra has added an expanded credit-spread model and new market-implied credit ratings to Cosmos 3.1. Other enhancements include expansion to cover nine additional emerging markets, new measures of spread risk for all emerging markets, expanded U.S.-bond coverage, and additional indices to cover mortgages, iboxx euro and sterling credit.

LatentZero, a London-based buy-side-solutions provider, has announced connectivity between the vendor's front-office trading and compliance products and NYFIX. NYFIX, which offers electronic-trading and trade-order-routing connectivity, will bring direct access to sell-side brokerages and exchanges for LatentZero's buy-side clients. The interface will leverage the Financial Information eXchange Protocol in order for firms to route orders and programs to NYFIX for execution at one of more than 250 liquidity destinations. The NYFIX connectivity adds to LatentZero's recent connectivity to Liquidnet, Lava Trading, Instinet and ITG.