T-Zero, credit derivative affirmation and connectivity provider, continues to benefit from the growth of credit derivatives in the market. To continue this expansion, the company recently appointed Clive de Ruig to the newly created position of head of North America.
In his new role, de Ruig will oversee marketing and client services and work with the US team to continue the firm’s global expansion. Since joining T-Zero in October 2005, de Ruig has held positions in European marketing and as director of business development with responsibility for European dealers, buy-side and prime brokers.
“Clive has played an instrumental role building T-Zero’s client base among major institutions, and he is particularly well suited to help our firm attain the next level of growth,” says Mark Beeston, T-Zero president. “T-Zero is continually being sought out as a way to reduce and eliminate operational and settlement risks in an industry that has been growing at a very fast pace.”
Beeston says the recent market volumes and volatility has again highlighted the need for automation and system-to-system connectivity to ensure continued growth in the credit derivatives market. “T-Zero’s ISDA-compliant novations technology delivers automation and scale to the middle and back offices,” he says. “Attaining the highest level of post-trade efficiencies is crucial as the credit derivatives markets continue to develop.”
T-Zero markets itself as helping to ease the operational concerns that come with the rising credit derivatives market. It was launched in July 2005 to respond to the need to capture accurate trade data without excess e-mails in the middle office and leverage that data to other downstream applications.
Over the past two years, T-Zero’s trade affirmation platform has been adopted by nearly 150 buy-side institutions, used by major dealers as well as prime brokers, the company says. It works through either a Bloomberg terminal or standalone. Beeston didn’t comment on the actual amount of trade volume T-Zero receives from clients.
T-Zero executives speak optimistically about the derivatives industry, saying that while the credit crunch tested the operational models, it was more manageable than it would have been two years ago.
De Ruig’s focus will be working with US-based clients including dealers, prime brokers and hedge funds to support their business needs while also aiming to continue the firm’s exponential business growth. T-Zero has been on-boarding new clients to the platform at a healthy clip this year and expects this pace to continue in 2008 as clients and banks increasingly leverage the platform’s connectivity and novation functionality.
When asked how they hope to further expand business, Beeston said they continue to pursue a good share of CDS volume, but isn’t ruling out including other assets in the mix someday. It’s also hard to predict how other vendors will play in the market, he says.
Andrew Longmuir, vice president, credit markets technology, seemed please with T-Zero and expressed hope that it would be adopted more in the market. “The trick is getting more people using it,” he says.