Omgeo 'Early Adopter' Program Gains Momentum

Omgeo today announced that 17 firms have already signed on as "Early Adopters" of its Omgeo Central Trade Manager (Omgeo CTM) global STP platform, further expanding the capability of Omgeo's community of 6,000 clients. These include six investment managers Lazard

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Omgeo today announced that 17 firms have already signed on as “Early Adopters” of its Omgeo Central Trade Manager (Omgeo CTM) global STP platform, further expanding the capability of Omgeo’s community of 6,000 clients. These include six investment managers – Lazard Asset Management, Legg Mason Investors, Montgomery Asset Management, Invista Capital Management, Royal London Asset Management and Sofaer Global Research (HK) Limited; three broker-dealers – Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley; five custodian banks – Bank of New York, Citibank, N.A., Investors Bank & Trust, Northern Trust and Wells Fargo; two STP Vendor Partners – Charles River Development and Thomson Financial Investment Management Group; as well as State Street Investment Manager Solutions LLC, a provider of outsourced post trade operations services.

Omgeo CTM is a new central matching solution for domestic as well as cross-border trades worldwide, also providing real-time settlement instruction enrichment and settlement notification messaging. It incorporates industry Codes of Practice and local market standards to promote data integrity and streamline settlement. Though it runs on an entirely new XML-based, 15022-compliant TCP/IP platform, Omgeo CTM provides a bridge to the organization’s ETC service Omgeo OASYS GlobalSM, which it will eventually replace, enabling early adopting investment managers to immediately process their global trades through Omgeo CTM with any broker currently using OASYS Global, rather than with only those brokers that have also moved directly to the new central matching platform.

“Omgeo CTM is an appropriate solution for a firm like ours that deals with hundreds of different brokers all over the world,” said John Riccardi, senior vice president of Lazard Asset Management. “We can immediately gain the benefits of the latest cross-border STP technology, without losing access to those of our brokers who are operating in the OASYS Global environment.”

Omgeo currently serves over 1,200 brokers globally through its existing network of services.

Under the Early Adopter program, firms who decide to use Omgeo Central Trade Manager can lock-in 2002 pricing that is comparable to current pricing for Omgeo’s existing OASYS Global service while gaining the added flexibility and functionality inherent in Omgeo CTM’s exception-processing oriented streamlined workflow environment.

Under the Early Adopter pricing formula, a typical transaction involving a broker, an investment manager and a custodian bank would be priced at approximately $1.96, inclusive of enrichment and settlement notification. Charges would be apportioned between the parties based on the specific workflow details and could vary significantly from transaction to transaction as those details vary.

“We are delighted to make the commitment as an early adopter with Omgeo,” stated Tom Perna, senior executive vice president and sector executive at The Bank of New York. “It is important to us to continue to be at the forefront of major industry STP initiatives such as the Omgeo CTM. The pricing flexibility provided by Omgeo’s early adopter program is a further demonstration of the continued efficiency coming from this industry utility.”

“We think Omgeo’s phased migration strategy is the right one in the current business environment,” said David Rogers of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. “Not every firm on the street wants to make a huge commitment to new STP technology right now and Omgeo allows firms to move at their own pace.”

The involvement of two participants in the Omgeo STP Partners ProgramSM also enhances the Omgeo CTM Early Adopter program. The STP Partners Program was developed in 1998 as a means to reach out to the vendor community and develop interfaces that can be offered to a shared client community. Through this program, STP Partners and their clients – investment managers, broker/dealers and custodian banks – have the capability of leveraging certified and modular interfaces to Omgeo services, therefore shortening the time and reducing costs associated with building their own customized interfaces.

To date, key participants of the Omgeo STP Partners Program stretch across buy-side order management systems, portfolio management systems, sell-side trading systems, service bureaus and outsourcers for investment managers, service bureaus for broker/dealers, service bureaus for custodians, and middleware vendors around the globe. By bringing together such a large number of industry players and creating a community of counterparties, Omgeo is able to spur the drive towards global STP.

“We are excited about Omgeo CTM and the benefits it will bring our clients,” said Peter Lambertus, CEO of Charles River Development. “As a leading buyside trade order management provider with more than 60 clients, we can act as a consolidator to Omgeo CTM. This will greatly aid our clients in streamlining exception processing and real-time STP.”

Omgeo announced the official client release of software code for Omgeo CTM in October. Currently being implemented by Early Adopters, the new matching service is expected to have live users in early 2002.

“Unlike some of our competitors, Omgeo is already offering real services to real clients that deliver real value,” said Dave Merrill, Omgeo managing director of global operations. “The Omgeo CTM Early Adopter program is not a pilot; it’s an upgrade to a more streamlined and robust global STP solution.”

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