RISK MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY BRIEFS

SunGard Trading and Risk Systems has appointed Paul Murphy as president of SunGard Collateral and Steve Husk as president of Credient/Infinity. Murphy and Husk will report to Jim Ashton, chief executive officer of SunGard Trading and Risk Systems. Murphy previously was at Synamic where he helped grow its collateral business prior to its sale to SunGard in 1999. Husk was previously managing director and chief executive at Iris Financial Engineering, a supplier of custom-built software solutions for the capital markets. Husk will oversee SunGard's commitment to credit risk management with the oversight for Credient, an ASP delivered credit risk management and control solution.

Tremont Advisors, a provider of hedge fund investment management, has established a joint development relationship with RiskMetrics to develop Web-based risk reporting for hedge fund managers and investors. The two companies look to address issues specific to the alternative investment industry with a focus on creating best practices reporting standards for hedge funds and fund of funds based on complete transparency of hedge-fund positions being made available on a secure basis solely to RiskMetrics. The relationship will also seek to balance the need of investors for risk exposure information with the need of hedge fund managers to preserve their proprietary trading strategies.

Standard & Poor's has formed a strategic alliance with the Risk Data Bank of Japan Limited (RDB) to develop a scoring model for assessing the creditworthiness of Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). RDB currently aggregates SME data from its 38 member financial institutions and will seek to expand bank membership to increase the quality of the data and the accuracy of the model as part of the agreement. The two companies look to allow Japanese banks to use the model to supplement, customize and validate their rating systems in accordance with the new Basel Capital Accord standards.