The art of Rodin, Rembrandt and so many other artists demonstrates that the greatest art is a play of light and darkness. A Rembrandt is also a pitcher in baseball who “paints” the corner of the base with his perfect delivery of the ball. There is no such thing as darkness, just the absence of light. Light is the means by which man peers into the darkness. Faust sold his soul for a chance to peer into the darkness. So did Adam and Eve sell theirs.

Keefe Bruyette & Woods (KBW), a Stifel company (NYSE:SF), and Nasdaq (NASDAQ:NDAQ) today announced the launch of the KBW Nasdaq Global Bank Index (Ticker: GBKX), the first and only index designed to track the performance of those banks designated as global systemically important (G-SIBs) by the Financial Stability Board and Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The 28 banks included in the KBW Nasdaq Global Bank Index represent 45% of the global investable banking universe and account for approximately $3T in total market cap.

Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, announced today it has been appointed by the Hong Kong Treasury Markets Association (TMA) as the calculating agent for the TMA RMB Bond Indicative Quotes. The indicative quotes aim at increasing the price transparency for RMB-denominated institutional bonds issued in Hong Kong by the Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China.  The publication of the indicative quotes will be conducive to strengthening Hong Kong’s position as a leading offshore RMB center.

For the first time in the UK, customers looking to switch to Halifax can now speed up the process with the brand new snap to switch service. By allowing customers to upload the details of the account they are switching from by simply taking a photograph of their debit card on their Smartphone, the tool creates a faster and more streamlined experience.

Finansinvest, based in Istanbul, Turkey, has adopted SunGard’s Front Arena trading solution, which will help the firm source and trade liquidity at the right price in multiple asset classes. SunGard’s multi-asset trading solution will help Finansinvest gain a competitive edge in pricing and risk management, market making on the Turkish stock exchange, trade and execution management, cross-asset trading, over-the-counter (OTC) electronic trading, and order management.

 IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced that Network Ten, an Australian commercial broadcasting network, has successfully implemented the Aspera On Demand (AOD) solution from Aspera, an IBM company, for cloud-based delivery of promotional content for

S2M, a North African pioneer in card payment solutions, has deployed Cryptomathic’s CardInk, EMV data preparation system, to enhance the flexible issuance of its EMV chip card portfolio and support the growing customer demand across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced that the Thomson Reuters SEF has completed certification testing for FX non-deliverable forwards (NDF) clearing by LCH.Clearnet’s ForexClear service. This is part of Thomson Reuters commitment to achieving the highest standards of best practice across its platforms.

DeltaOne Solutions, a CoreOne Technologies company, today announced their alliance with 

Misys, the leading financial software company, has been named a “Major Global Player” in the latest Global Banking Platform Deals report from Forrester Research. To achieve this recognition, Misys signed 101 new and extended banking deals in 2014, spread across three major regions. Of these, 22 were new named banks.