City Networks announced today its intention to invest in Message Automation, a London-based derivatives processing specialist.
The two companies have agreed terms for City Networks to acquire a significant minority stake in Message Automation. At the same time, both companies have signed a partnership agreement that enables City Networks to add extensive derivatives processing to their business solutions. Under the new partnership agreement, City Networks will be able to offer their more than 500 global customers Message Automation’s matching and reconciliation technology, which is based on FpML (Financial products Markup Language).
“Given the continued growth in the use of OTC derivatives and the fact that there is still a high level of manual processing involved, most financial firms experience high error rates and remain exposed to significant risks and losses,” says Richard Hill, City Networks’ CEO. “Automating these complex trades is not easy and whilst we already had some capability in this area, we wanted to provide our customers with deeper functionality that supported all derivatives processing regardless of asset class. We are confident that with Message Automation’s expertise in this area, our Proactive process management software will be positioned at the forefront of derivatives processing.”