Securities Operations: Canyons of Inconsistent, Standalone Data Posing A Major STP Challenge for Derivatives Wild West. Straight-through processing of fixed-income and derivatives trades, particularly credit default swaps, has progressed greatly in the past two or three years, but has further to go to keep up with continued increases in volumes of trades, according to industry observers and service providers.

Industry Alert: NYSE’s Price Compression Presages ECN Consolidation. With the advent of a new group of electronic communications networks, several block trading venues, and many firms’ own internal trade execution platforms, exchanges like Nasdaq and the NYSE face increased competitive pressures.

Hedge Funds: Hedge Fund Growth Is Changing Bond Market Dynamics. Along with an increase in US fixed-income trading, particularly by hedge funds, electronic trading is changing the dynamics of bond markets, with trading volume increases seen in the past year, according to research by Greenwich Associates.

Spotlight: Lázaro Campos, Chief Executive Officer, SWIFT.

Securities Messaging Standards: SWIFT to Leverage ISO 20022 to Expand Its Reach. At Sibos 2007, expect SWIFT to push to bring more corporate bond processing messages onto its network and increase its emphasis on the ISO 20022 message standard for segments of the financial industry it has not yet reached.

Data Management: Rising Data Tsunami Tests Latency, Legacy Systems. Recent market volatility spurred greater volumes of trading in fixed-income and derivatives, and contributed to an increase in the volume of market data. This in turn is spurring a greater use of data aggregators and complex event processing services.

New Product Roundup: IT Solutions Help Market’s Advance Into Derivatives. At Sibos 2007, IT vendors are rushing with beefed up offerings as the market’s quest for trading and processing efficiency accelerates, offering solutions of value to investment managers, broker-dealers and custodial banks.

Clearance & Settlement: Swiss Group Shows Strength in Strategic Initiatives. Central counterparty SIS x-clear AG is making its presence felt throughout Europe with the launch of its clearing service for the SWX Swiss Exchange and a clearing cooperation agreement with Eurex Clearing.