Recent notable headline mergers & acquisitions (M&As) such as Sainsbury’s agreeing a £1.3 billion takeover of Argos owner Home Retail Group, Starwood Hotel & Resorts merger with Marriott International for £9 billion and most recently the merge agreement between London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Bӧrse, have drawn attention to the implications of failing IT systems when companies merge.

Huddersfield-based Robertson Baxter is one of the top IFA firms in the country according to the UK’s leading independent IFA ranking system, VouchedFor. 

VouchedFor is an online portal where investors can find trusted financial advisors in their area. Their Top Rated award has been created to help identify and highlight the professionals on VouchedFor that have received the highest volume of positive client reviews in the past 18 months.

BPC Banking Technologies has been recognised as the Best Payments Solution Provider in South Africa, by The Banker Africa Award. All the winners in 29 categories reflect the diversity and evolution of the Southern African region, with fast-growing country-specific institutions recognised alongside first-tier regional banks.

 FlexTrade Systems, a global leader in multi-asset execution management systems is pleased to announce the first integration between OTAS Technologies’ natural language intelligence and analysis systems, and Symphony Communication Services LLC’s platform, in the company’s FlexTRADER EMS.

For buy-side traders this means not only do they have access to OTAS’s live market

analytics and intelligence, but also where this might influence their trading strategy they can communicate this in natural language, in the trader’s Symphony chat with their portfolio manager.

Speakerbus, the specialist provider of critical voice solutions for financial, emergency and command sectors, announced today that it has recently hired Danson Lam from Etrali (now part of IPC) to join the Asia-Pacific new business team. Based in Hong Kong, Danson was previously regional Sales Manager at Etrali and is a highly-experienced voice trading platform specialist.

Provenir  announces that Bigbank has chosen the Provenir solution to overhaul its processing of credit and loans.

Estonian-owned Bigbank provides term deposits and consumer loans. It operates in the Baltics, Nordics, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Spain and is subject to a range of evolving regulation. To remain compliant, and to stay competitive as market conditions and customer expectations change, Bigbank makes updates to risk models and policies, which can take up to four weeks. Changes will be simpler and quicker with Provenir as they won’t require IT development.

FIME’s Greenlight test tool has been qualified by technical body EMVCo to deliver Level 1 mobile performance testing. The fully automated tool measures the payment transaction time between a smartphone and acceptance terminal. The tool is available to purchase for in-house testing and is used by FIME’s laboratories.

A new study from Juniper Research has found that the global value of mobile and wearable contactless payments is expected to reach $95 billion annually by 2018, up from less than $35 billion last year.
 

Teleena announced that Kim Bybjerg, one of the pioneers of the Internet of Things in Europe, will join its Board of Non-Executive Directors.