LOS ANGELES - The $5 billion Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System is shipping out electronic versions of its request for proposals for a global emerging market equities manager over the Internet.
The RFP is available to those who e-mail a request to the pension fund, according to Dan Gallagher, chief investment officer. The pension fund's e-mail address is [email protected]
The RFP is formatted in Microsoft Word 6.0, a word processing program. Several copies of the RFP have been requested, said Mr. Gallagher. The electronic version, he said, saves on typing chores and gives near instantaneous delivery.
Oscar Peters, general manager of the fund, was the "driving force" to use the Internet, said Mr. Gallagher. The pension fund also has a site on the World Wide Web: http: www.primenet.com/;lacers.
BERKELEY, Calif. - BARRA Inc. has released Riskcaster Real-Time 3.0, a program that can perform equity portfolio risk analysis using real-time information.
Using Riskcaster 3.0 and BARRA's U.S. Short Term Risk Model, prices and portfolio risk characterization can be updated on demand or at a set frequency. Performing real-time optimization improves tracking performance.
"The real-time capability enables dealers, market-makers, and traders to manage inventory risk intraday, which is particularly critical during periods of high volatility," said Harish Lakhani, senior product manager of BARRA's equity trading services unit.
Market-makers and dealers will be able to closely monitor rapidly changing positions and control with greater accuracy their inventory risk. Proprietary traders will benefit from the ability to implement their trading strategies more effectively.
Index arbitragers and structured derivatives providers will be able to reduce risk by rebalancing to reflect intraday volatility, said Mr. Lakhani.
Riskcaster 3.0 is also structured to work with Market Vision's MVLink and provide open access to real-time information.
Riskcaster can be modified to work with other vendors' products or proprietary tools. Riskcaster can be adapted to interface with trade entry systems to capture information on entered trades and update a portfolio's risk characteristics immediately.
For further information, contact Mr. Lakhani at (510) 548-5442.
LOS ANGELES - Michael Shearer has joined the research group of Capital Management Sciences Inc. as senior quantitative analyst.
His primary responsibility is the design and support of CMS' analytical models. Mr. Shearer, who received his doctorate from the University of California at Los Angeles in applied mathematics, formerly worked at the aerospace company Pacific-Sierra Research Corp., Santa Monica, Calif.
NEW YORK - The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication appointed Bob Davies as senior market manager-securities clearing and settlement services. Based in New York, Mr. Davies is working for SWIFT's securities marketing organization in Brussels. He has worldwide responsibility for developments in the securities clearing and settlement arena.
Mr. Davies had been at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. as manager of technical innovations in banking and securities processing.
SAN FRANCISCO - Argent Investment Services released a new Windows-based portfolio construction and management system.
SOVEREIGN enables portfolio managers to blend sophisticated quantitative tools with traditional, fundamental investment disciplines. Users can interactively construct, optimize, analyze, monitor and rebalance virtually all types of equity portfolios.
The system's features include creating and maintaining portfolios, composites and benchmarks; controlling investment policy guidelines; sorting and screening; portfolio modeling and what-if scenario structuring; and importing and exporting of data.
For further information, contact Roberta Lyon or Tom Abbott at Argent at (415) 905-8330.
NEW YORK - Transaction Information Systems has incorporated the Netscape publishing system into interactive financial applications distributed on the Internet.
The incorporation permits financial services companies to improve distribution of documents.
TIS' service provides a secure transaction system for registering and billing clients online. It eliminates the need for third-party online services.
"We are a Netscape Communication Corp. business partner. Our business focuses on the Web and how to use the Internet as an information vehicle," said Scott Faktor, a vice president at TIS.
The publishing system is a software package for organizing, customizing and delivering text, graphics, audio and video documents to Internet users. For further information, contact Mr. Faktor at (212) 962-1550.
