Bats Global Markets, a progressive worldwide provider of exchanges and services for financial markets, commented that its Bats One Premium market data product is now available for distribution through numerous FactSet products and platforms. FactSet, a global supplier of integrated financial data, analytical software, and industry-leading service, this month became the first distribution partner to reveal the new offer.

Bats One Premium features five levels of real-time quoted depth and trade information across the four Bats U.S. stock exchanges, and is geared towards the sophisticated professional investor.

“We’re excited about bringing our new, premium version of Bats One to market,” said Kevin Carrai, Vice President, Market Data and Access Services, at Bats. “Professional investors are increasingly seeking access to more comprehensive stock market data and we are committed to finding new and unique ways to meet the industry’s needs.”

The four Bats U.S. equities exchanges combine to consistently make Bats the #1 exchange operator by market share for continuous trading as well as a leading destination for exchange-traded fund (ETF) trading in the U.S.

Consistent with the Bats strategy of providing data at a lower cost to the industry, the Bats One Feed is significantly less expensive than similar products on the market. Bats One Summary Feed is 60% less expensive per professional user1, about 85% less expensive for an enterprise license for professional users, and 50% lower for an enterprise license for non-professional users. The Bats One Feed can also be used as a standalone product or as a supplement to other market data products.

Everledger is heading to Tokyo for a competition with ten regional champions to contest for a partnership with NTT DATA. Winning London innovation applies block chain technology to track the provenance of valuable artworks and artefacts.

Everledger has won the London stage of NTT DATA’s Global Open Innovation Business Contest 5.0. Now, the Everledger team is flying to Tokyo, Japan to compete against entrepreneurs from all over the world in the Grand Finale. Participants will be competing for the financial award, worth USD 30,000 to support the development of their new businesses, and a chance to get into the highly innovative Japanese market.

This contest is all about giving start-ups the best opportunity to succeed. Not only do they receive invaluable feedback and guidance on their ideas via direct access to business leaders, but also the chance to create a ‘triple-win’ partnership with NTT DATA and their clients to develop their business,” said Kotaro Zamma, head of section of open innovation and business incubation, NTT DATA.

Everledger uses blockchain technology to create a digital global ledger, which tracks and protects valuable items such as diamonds “from mine to market”. By creating a digital provenance trail, the technology eliminates the need for a large paper trail between owners, insurers and transporters as valuable items change hands around the world.

The concept pitched to NTT DATA married this capability with NTT DATA’s own AMLAD digital archiving technology, which was developed to scan and record, in very high definition, priceless manuscripts from the Vatican Library. The concept product could provide a new way to archive and create an immutable provenance trail for valuable artworks.

This is the first time that NTT DATA has located the competition globally. Having achieved significant success in the company’s native Japan over the last two years, the contest has now expanded to 10 additional locations in 2017, including London.

Winners of other regional heats to date include Legalbot in Sao Paulo, a company planning to democratise regulatory intelligence using machine learning analytic tools, and Paykey in Tel Aviv, which proposed a new peer-to-peer payment solution. Everledger will join these firms in the Grand Finale of the Global Open Innovation Contest 5.0 in Tokyo on the 15^th March 2017.

In addition to the contribution of business support, Grand Finale winners will also receive travel and accommodation for two weeks for two people to join a collaboration project with NTT DATA in Japan, as well as a 6-month pass to a co-working space in Tokyo, presented by NTT DOCOMO Ventures Corp.

• 15.02.2017 -- 11:12 am

Peter Loop, Associate Vice President - Sr. Principal Technology Architect at Infosys speaks with Financial IT about blockchain framework for banks.

PayPal Holdings, Inc. and TIO Networks Corp., a cloud-based multi-channel bill payment processing and receivables management company, today announced a final agreement under which PayPal will acquire TIO for amount of $3.35 CAD ($2.56 USD) per share, in cash or an approximate $304 million CAD ($233 million USD) equity value. The purchase price demonstrates a premium of 25.2% to TIO’s 90-trading day volume-weighted average price as of February 13, 2017, and 22.6% to the 20-trading day volume-weighted average price as of January 9, 2017, the trading day immediately preceding the date TIO entered into exclusive negotiations with PayPal. 

TIO is a leading multi-channel bill payment processor in North America and processed more than $7 billion USD in consumer bill payments in fiscal 2016. TIO serves 14 million consumer bill pay accounts* and offers convenient solutions for expedited bill payment services to financially underserved consumers. The company has more than 10,000 supported billers and numerous direct relationships with billers, which enable TIO to quickly process telecom, wireless, cable and utility bill payments for TIO’s customers. Using TIO’s approximately 900 operated self-service kiosks, approximately 65,000 retail walk-in locations, and mobile and web solutions, customers can conveniently pay their bills while avoiding the service interruptions and financial penalties associated with missed payment deadlines.

Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal, said, “By acquiring TIO and integrating bill payment into our global payments platform, PayPal adds another key service in our efforts to become a part of a consumer’s everyday financial life. Worldwide, more than 2 billion** people do not have affordable access to basic financial services, making it difficult and expensive for consumers to carry out basic financial tasks, including bill payment. TIO’s digital platform, and physical network of agent locations make paying bills simpler, faster, and more affordable. We are excited by the opportunity to extend this valuable service to our existing customers and welcome new billers and customers to PayPal."

Hamed Shahbazi, Chairman and CEO of TIO, remarked, “We founded TIO to make speed and access part of the bill payment experience for the underserved, and we believe that we have created affordable products to serve the needs of all customers. Our mission fits perfectly with PayPal’s vision to democratize money. As part of the PayPal team, we believe we will accelerate our growth through expanded distribution and continue increasing access to more billers and services.”

Expected Strategic Benefits of the TIO Acquisition

• Aligned with PayPal’s Vision: TIO supports PayPal’s vision of democratizing money by giving consumers more convenient and affordable ways to pay their bills.
• Expands Market Opportunity: TIO accelerates PayPal’s entry into bill payments with 14 million consumer bill pay accounts*, approximately 60 million transactions processed in TIO’s fiscal 2016 and a processing network that includes more than 10,000 billers.
• Extends Consumer Value Proposition: PayPal’s intention is to offer TIO’s valuable service to PayPal’s customers within its online and mobile experiences.

Upon closing of the acquisition, TIO will operate as a service within PayPal.

Financial Highlights of Acquisition

PayPal intends to fund the transaction with cash on its balance sheet. There will be no change to PayPal’s previously communicated fiscal 2017 guidance and three-year outlook based on the acquisition of TIO. For the fiscal year ended July 31, 2016, TIO generated $74.7 million CAD in revenue ($57.1 million USD) and $10.6 million CAD in adjusted EBITDA ($8.1 million USD). TIO defines EBITDA as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization and adjusted EBITDA as EBITDA plus stock-based compensation, non-recurring transaction and restructuring expenses.

Transaction Details

The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2017, and will be completed by way of a plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia).

The completion of the transaction will be subject to the approval of at least two-thirds of the votes cast at a special meeting of TIO shareholders and optionholders present in person or represented by proxy at the meeting, by: (i) TIO shareholders; (ii) by TIO shareholders and optionholders, voting together as a single class; and (iii) a majority of the votes cast by TIO shareholders present in person or represented by proxy at the meeting, excluding for this purpose votes attached to the TIO common shares held by persons described in items (a) through (d) of Section 8.1(2) of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 – Take-Over Bids and Special Transactions.

The meeting of shareholders and optionholders is expected to take place in April, 2017. In addition to TIO securityholder approvals, the transaction is also subject to other closing conditions, including the receipt of approvals relating to TIO’s money transmitter licenses, the expiration or early termination of the applicable pre-merger waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, and court approval in British Columbia, Canada.

The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of each of TIO and PayPal, and the TIO Board recommends that TIO shareholders and optionholders vote in favor of the Arrangement. The recommendation of the TIO Board was based on the recommendation of a special committee of independent directors of TIO. The financial advisor to TIO, Raymond James Ltd., has provided a fairness opinion to the special committee and board of directors of TIO that, subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications set out in such fairness opinion, the consideration to be received by TIO shareholders pursuant to the plan of arrangement is fair, from a financial point of view, to the TIO shareholders.

In addition, TIO shareholders, directors and officers, including funds managed by Core Innovation Capital, Napier Park Financial Partners, Edison Partners, Inter-Atlantic Advisors and Inductive Capital, representing approximately 50.4% of the issued and outstanding common shares have agreed to vote their shares in favor of the transaction. The transaction includes customary deal protection provisions, including non-solicitation of an alternative transaction and a termination fee payable to PayPal under certain circumstances.

Tortoise Index Solutions, being part of the Tortoise family group, today declared the launch of the Tortoise Water Fund (TBLU). TBLU is an ETF, designed to control the overall return of the Tortoise Water Index. It consists of organizations that are originally involved in the water infrastructure and water management businesses. 

“Water is critical for economic growth and social stability. We believe that there is a tremendous need in the market for a quality index that accurately represents the water industry,” said Jeremy Goff, Tortoise director. “Creating this product is a natural extension of our strategy to provide essential asset solutions in wrappers that are desired by advisors and investors.”

TBLU will employ a passive approach to provide exposure to water infrastructure, management and treatment companies that appear poised to benefit from the expected and much needed investment to rebuild existing infrastructure, construct new infrastructure and better manage and enhance the sustainability of this vital, but finite resource.

“We believe that our fund offers the purest exposure to the water industry by tracking an index that incorporates fundamental weighting factors that recognize and adjust for the fragmented nature of the water space,” said Matthew Weglarz, portfolio manager for the fund. “The urgent need for investment in this essential asset, and the infrastructure that supports it, is becoming increasingly recognized and our fund provides a more direct way for investors to access the opportunity.”

Cohesity, the pioneer of hyperconverged secondary storage, today unleashed the release of Cohesity DataPlatform Virtual Edition (VE) and Cohesity C2100 Hyperconverged Node products for distant branch offices. Together with Cohesity DataProtect, the new DataPlatform, VE product conveys an integrated software-only backup solution that deploys on virtual machines ideal for remote or branch office locations. Currently, data can be accumulated and replicated to a central data centre for disaster recovery and long-term retention with Cohesity’s intelligent, web-scale storage system, saving companies time and money. Along with the introduction of Cohesity DataPlatform VE, it provides the first integrated data protection solution that deploys from the edge to the data centre to the cloud, with a common feature-set and management interface.

Enterprises are grappling with exponential data growth that includes both on-premises data centers and cloud storage, as well as remote offices and devices on the edge. Deployed on VMware vSphere, Cohesity DataPlatform VE extends the capabilities of the company’s hyperconverged secondary storage platform by providing consistent management of data protection and backup workloads across all sizes and types of locations, including remote offices, regional data centers, core data centers and public clouds. 

“With the addition of DataPlatform Virtual Edition for remote sites, along with the previously announced DataPlatform Cloud Edition for public clouds, Cohesity can now provide a unified, end-to-end data protection experience that spans from the edge of the enterprise to on-premises data center to public clouds,” said Taneja Group Founder and Consulting Analyst Arun Taneja. “This demonstrates the power of software-defined secondary storage to provide seamless data protection solutions across all forms of IT infrastructure that exist in the modern enterprise.”

Cohesity DataPlatform VE eliminates the need to provision any new hardware in the remote or branch offices and can be remotely installed and administered without requiring on-site support, which is often in short supply at remote offices. Cohesity also released an entry-level hardware configuration that extends the reach of its data protection coverage for branch office or regional data center deployments. The C2100 entry-level hyperconverged node with Cohesity DataPlatform Standard Edition provides a dedicated data protection solution designed for environments with multiple server hosts and storage. With the addition of these products, enterprises are able to simplify the management of remote office backups, increasing efficiency and reducing costs.

“Cohesity Virtual Edition provides the benefits of seamless hyperconverged secondary storage on a global scale,” said Cohesity Head of Product Management and Marketing Patrick Rogers. “With the growing amount of enterprises distributing across the globe, protecting data from the edge of the data centre to the cloud is a challenge. Cohesity Virtual Edition provides a highly-efficient and infinitely scalable storage architecture that addresses these changes.”

“This is a perfect use case for hyper-converged infrastructure,” said ESG Founder and Senior Analyst Steve Duplessie. “The benefits of centralised data protection with the simplicity and ease of a software only solution and the economics of the cloud make this incredibly attractive.”

Milestone Group, the global provider of investment technology and processing solutions for institutional investors, today announced that SEI (NASDAQ:SEIC) has selected its pControl multi-asset software platform to support the growth of its Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) business.

pControl will initially administer the automated allocation of daily cash flows and rebalancing of complex portfolios for SEI’s Institutional Group. This will ensure the scalable implementation and delivery of SEI’s most sophisticated solutions. The solution helps OCIOs by leveraging the globally proven pControl multi-asset investment platform and has capabilities spanning front, middle and back office functions.

Kevin Matthews, Vice President and Managing Director, Solutions Team, SEI Institutional Group, said: “As one of the largest OCIOs, SEI is always looking for ways to improve how we deliver services to our clients. We reviewed a number of options, but pControl stood out as the solution that best supports our business and the complex multi-asset structures that we manage. pControl brings flexibility, efficiency and scalability to this operation, allowing SEI to focus on client delivery, and developing sophisticated products and strategies and getting them to market quickly.”

John Herlihy, Director of Business Development for Milestone Group in North America added: “The OCIO market in North America is growing rapidly, and organizations are looking to get the technology infrastructure right for now and the future. Our pControl OCIO Solution represents a fresh approach and has been described as the most complete solution available to OCIOs seeking to scale their business. We are excited to be partnering with SEI on this project.”

Jack Henry & Associates, Inc., a major provider of digital solutions and payment transactions, primarily for the financial services industry, announced the launch of the newly redesigned www.banno.com.