BGC Partners, Inc.("BGC Partners", "BGC", or "the Company"), a leading global brokerage company servicing the financial and real estate markets, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Besso Insurance Group Limited ("Besso"), an independent Lloyd's of London insurance broker with a strong reputation across Property, Casualty, Marine, Aviation, Professional and Financial Risks and Reinsurance.

Validate is the leading API based realtime payment beneficiary validation solution for Banks, NBFI's and Corporates. It will validate single and bulk payments and suggest changes and enrichment to make sure  its users achieve near 100% STP, dramatically lower operation costs caused by payment failures and improve client relationships. 

Consider the following statistics:

Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO), the world leader in digital security, is launching a leading edge LTE Cat. M1​ wireless module for IoT solutions​. The new Cinterion® LTE Cat. M1 solution takes network efficiency and simplicity to new heights, delivering LTE for Machine-Type-Communication (MTC) and improved power savings that enables battery life of 10+ years, for some use cases.

I spent the holidays diligently researching the best brand of mince pies in order to settle a pre-Christmas debate here at Fidessa Towers. Naturally my criteria included a number of factors including (but not just) price and, perhaps surprisingly, the winner was Tesco’s in-house bakery. Back at work, my attention turned to my other favourite M word – MiFID II – as a colleague had sent me through the latest Q&A docs from ESMA whilst I was away.

Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO), the world leader in digital security, is supplying AT&T with a remote subscription management solution that will help enable its customers to deploy new and highly secure IoT applications in the U.S. and globally.

Gemalto's LinqUS On-Demand Connectivity (ODC) subscription management solution and GSMA M2M 3.1 compliant Embedded SIMs (eSIMs) will simplify the logistics of providing mobile services for Enterprises requiring global mobile connectivity for IoT applications and provide improved life cycle support for their subscriptions.

Chase de Vere, the national firm of independent financial advisers, is pleased to announce that it will be partnering with Intelliflo, as it invests in technology solutions to upgrade its back, middle and front office systems. The project is being led by Bob Kelly, Chase de Vere’s Director of IT.

The Company has spent over 12 months researching the market and analysing the various options in great detail, taking on board valuable feedback from employees and external experts. As a result of this, the decision has been made to use Intelliflo’s Intelligent Office system.

There are lots of predictions being made for 2017.  After all, it’s that time of year.  So, having reviewed whether mine were right or wrong at the end of 2016, my first blog for 2017 is to make 10 predictions for 2017.

Rather than making this a long and detailed blog update, it’s just 10 headlines we can expect to see this year.   Here you go: