10:40 AM
RISK-MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY
Barra has acquired all outstanding shares of Financial Engineering Associates in a $21.25 million cash deal. Through the acquisition Barra looks to leverage FEA's sell-side clients and market knowledge to develop a more comprehensive suite of risk analytics for trading and portfolio management. FEA will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Barra.
Pacific Coast Bankers' Bank has launched a risk-rating system to help independent financial institutions assess the risk and volatility of their investments in institutional money market funds. The RiskRater system will be offered through PCBB's Banc Investment Group broker/dealer subsidiary. The system assigned a numerical risk rating to institutional money market funds and creates a system to evaluate funds based on the consistency of returns covering a variety of risk factors. The RiskRater provides rankings on more than six fund families currently offered to banks served by the Banc Investment Group.
GNI Fund Management, a subsidiary of UK-based Old Mutual Fund Services, has selected SunGard Trading and Risk Systems' Panorama for portfolio management, reporting and real-time risk management. The Panorama system will monitor and report risk, positions and P&L activity across all of GNI Fund Management's funds.