JMP Group LLC, an investment banking and alternative asset management firm, announced today that Darren Sankbeil has joined JMP Securities as a managing director in its investment banking division. Based in the firm’s New York office, Mr. Sankbeil will lead JMP Securities’ investment banking efforts in the alternative energy and industrial technologies sectors.

“Darren is an accomplished banker with a wide range of skills and experiences, due to his background at both sector-focused M&A boutiques and global investment banks,” said Carter Mack, president of JMP Group. “His arrival builds on the foundation laid by Joe Osha’s recent research coverage of the alternative energy space and is a major step forward in the development of this new vertical at JMP, complementing our institutional brokerage services with strategic advisory and capital markets solutions.”

Prior to joining JMP Securities, Mr. Sankbeil served as a managing director at advisory boutique Teneo Capital, where he led the industrial technologies practice. Mr. Sankbeil was previously a partner and co-founder of New Infrastructure Advisors, a financial advisory and consulting firm focused on the industrial technologies and cleantech industries. Earlier in his career, he held investment banking roles at Banc of America Securities, in the global industries group, and at Citigroup, in the global industrial group, working in both New York and London. Mr. Sankbeil holds an MBA and a BA from the University of Michigan.

IT support engineers, technical managers and senior IT consultants are amongst the many hardworking staff that have enabled IT solutions company, Conosco, to become finalists in the IT Service and Support Awards 2017.

Conosco have been nominated for the category of ‘Best Managed Service Desk’. The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on 29 March 2017 at The Hilton Metropole, Birmingham.

Luke Morris, Conosco Technical Services Manager, said: “We’re thrilled to be finalists. The whole team has worked incredibly hard throughout the past year, from engineers available 24/7 supporting our clients, to those working in our strategic and service delivery departments.

“For us, it’s about connecting with our customers to create a service experience that meets their needs, demonstrates exceptional business value. We’re good at what we do, and our staff are truly exceptional. I’m hoping that these are the two major factors that will help us to win the award on March 29.”

Conosco’s service desk provision includes:

• 24/7 support - with 81% of requests receiving a response within 10 minutes, slashing 20 minutes off the agreed SLA response time of 30 minutes
• 90% of clients’ problems solved remotely – providing minimal disturbance to their day-to-day operations
• 90% client retention rate - majority of clients have been with Conosco for over five years

The IT Service and Support Awards 2017 recognise and promote outstanding achievements of people and teams for the contribution they make to the success of their clients’ businesses.

 Woodsford Litigation Funding, the global provider of litigation financing solutions for businesses, individuals and law firms, has announced a series of senior and executive appointments as it accelerates its expansion goals for 2017.

Woodsford Litigation Funding has promoted Steven Friel to Chief Executive Officer from the post of Chief Investment Officer. Steven has extensive experience in handling complex international disputes. Having previously been partner at two major international law firms, he has represented clients across a broad range of commercial, industrial and governmental sectors – including finance, insurance and disputes involving complex technology. Steven’s role will be to drive the global business while continuing to oversee all investment activity.

Yves Bonavero moves from the role of CEO to chairman of Woodsford Litigation Funding and will remain an active member of the senior executive team.

Steven Savage joins as Head of Marketing and Business Development, and brings 20 years’ experience of B2B marketing, including time in a similar role at Burford Capital.

Today’s announcement builds on a number of recent appointments in 2016, including Charlie Morris from Enyo Law and Lara Bird from Hausfeld, both of whom joined Woodsford’s London-based investment team, and of Fidelma Macken SC to Woodsford’s non-executive Investment Advisory Panel. Fidelma is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Ireland, and a former judge of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Woodsford Litigation Funding’s expansion comes at a time when litigation funding is increasingly becoming a part of the legal mainstream. Woodsfood’s CEO, Steven Friel, comments, “Litigation funding is on the increase around the world and we are pleased to offer a truly comprehensive, flexible and innovative portfolio of solutions for law firms, and their clients. The international expertise of our executive team and Investment Advisory Panel means we are ideally placed to provide financial solutions to the business of law anywhere in the world.”

SafeCharge (LON:SCH), a leader in advanced payment technologies, today announced that it has been selected by Madmoo, a leading browser game publishing house. As part of the agreement, SafeCharge will provide in-game payments for Madmoo’s new title, Rage War created by game developer, Fury Studio.

Implementation of SafeCharge's advanced payments solutions has enabled Fury Studio to boost approval ratios, deliver an improved checkout experience for players and reduce fraudulent transactions.

SafeCharge provides a range of payments products and services including a customised Personalised Cashier, a comprehensive back office featuring advanced reporting tools, and robust fraud prevention capabilities. In order to market the game globally, SafeCharge has enabled a number of local payment methods, currencies and languages to provide global coverage.

"SafeCharge is excited to be collaborating with Madmoo to provide advanced payments technologies for their distinctive client base," stated Yuval Ziv, COO, SafeCharge. "We strive to improve the checkout experience and security of Rage War players by optimising every aspect of the payments funnel."

"SafeCharge is our partner of choice for in-game payments based on experience with its advanced technology based solutions and its expertise in mobile payments," Hristo Tenchev, CEO, Madmoo. "We believe that our collaboration will enable Rage War to gain traction in new markets and offer players an enhanced in-game journey leading to increased conversions and reduced abandonments."

"Collaboration with our publisher Madmoo has given us access to SafeCharge's advanced technology capabilities and enabled us to achieve high approval ratios maximizing our revenues," stated Nadejda Danabasheva, Chief Gaming Officer, Fury Studio, Ltd. "As we are continuously expanding our games portfolio, we envision that SafeCharge will be our preferred payments partner based on its performance and the perfect fit of its solution portfolio to our unique needs."

 Cryptomathic, a pioneer in electronic signatures, today announces the launch of its centralised e-signature solution for Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES), in partnership with SwissSign, a subsidiary of Swiss Post and an official certification authority providing advanced and qualified certificates.

Utilising the combined solution for QES, banks and other institutions operating in Switzerland and the EU can now deliver a superior end-to-end digital customer experience by introducing digital signaturesthat carry the same legally binding status as those that are hand-written. The solution is deployable across all common digital channels including web browsers and mobile applications. The central signing solution utilises an organisation’s existing authentication infrastructure to deliver QES, allowing organisations to reduce costs, enhance agility, enable digitalisation and minimise liability risks.

The launch of this joint offering coincides with the total revision of the Swiss signature law (ZertES) and the recent enactment of the EU regulation on electronic identification and trust services (eIDAS), providing a new legal framework and set of standards for empowering web applications with eSignature capability. Cryptomathic and SwissSign successfully passed necessary product and service audits to help banks, government bodies and other institutions in their digitalisation strategy and allow them to sign contracts and other transactions in full compliance with both eIDAS and the requirements of Swiss signature law.

“Our Signer solution allows banking and other business applications to offer a fully secure, end-to-end digital signing experience to their customers with the highest assurance level,” comments Guillaume Forget, Managing Director at Cryptomathic GmbH. “Crucially, our partnership with SwissSign has resulted in an e-signature solution that offers a frictionless user experience combined with the unrivalled trust conveyed in SwissSign services. It leverages existing authentication technology and operates seamlessly within the user’s current browser window. This not only makes the completion of digital transition possible, but also makes the process elegant and convenient for their end-users.”

Urs Fischer, CEO at SwissSign, comments: “In the last months we experienced a growing demand for an integration of legally binding signatures in digital processes. We are proud to launch a service that combines probative assurance, flexible integration and non-repudiation with a great user experience. This is a real breakthrough; not only does it elevate e-signature services to full compliance with Swiss and EU standards, it also enables a wide range of organisations to lower operating costs and deliver faster and more agile digital services to customers.”

The joint QES solution combines Cryptomathic’s technology excellence in e-signatures with SwissSign’s unrivalled experience in providing secure e-identity. In order to comply with the EU’s new eIDAS regulation, the solution has been certified against relevant standards for the issuance of qualified certificates and for Trustworthy Systems Supporting Server Signing.

IBM today announced that it broke the U.S. patent record with 8,088 patents granted to its inventors in 2016, marking the 24th consecutive year of innovation leadership. IBM’s 2016 patent output covers a diverse range of inventions in artificial intelligence and cognitive computing, cognitive health, cloud, cybersecurity and other strategic growth areas for the company.

IBM inventors were granted more than 22 patents per day in 2016, enabling the company to become the first to surpass 8,000 patents in a single year. IBM researchers, engineers, and designers generated more than 2,700 patents for inventions related to AI, cognitive computing and cloud computing.

“Leading the world in innovation for 24 years in a row is a result of IBM’s unmatched commitment to innovation and R&D–reflected in this year’s new U.S. patent record, breaking the 8,000 barrier for the first time,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM’s chairman, president and CEO. “We are deeply proud of our inventors’ unique contributions to discovery, science and technology that are driving progress across business and society and opening the new era of cognitive business.” 

More than 8,500 IBM inventors residing in 47 states and territories and 47 countries are responsible for IBM’s record-setting 2016 patent tally. IBM inventors based in New York received over 2,700 patents, while IBMers based in California and Texas were granted over 1,000 patents each. The United States is home to more than half of IBM's $5.4 billion annual investment in research and development. This substantial commitment to unlocking new technologies is what has long propelled IBM into new markets, allowing it to create value for clients and opportunity for its employees, including the 25,000 Americans the company has pledged to hire over the next four years.

The Top Ten list of 2016 U.S. patent recipients* includes:

1.        IBM – 8,088

2.        Samsung Electronics – 5,518

3.        Canon – 3,665

4.        Qualcomm – 2,897

5.        Google – 2,835

6.        Intel – 2,784

7.        LG Electronics – 2,428

8.        Microsoft – 2,398

9.        Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. – 2,288

10.        Sony – 2,181

*Data provided by IFI CLAIMS Patent Services

In the area of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence, IBM inventors patented more than 1,100 inventions that help machines learn, reason, and efficiently process diverse data types while interacting with people in natural and familiar ways. For example:

·        Machine learning to secure the best answers: Providing accurate answers to questions that are posed by users is a fundamental goal of cognitive computing. IBM inventors created an approach for generating candidate answers to a question and then determining how good each candidate answer is based on a ground truth about the question - a baseline that the model knows to be true and can build on. When this process is applied iteratively, answer strength increases and the best answers for a question are identified and incorporated into the machine learning model, which can be applied across industries from financial services to retail. 
·        Planning the best route for a traveler’s cognitive state: Current navigation systems are programmed to change routes based on road conditions, but do not take into account a driver’s cognitive state. IBM inventors have developed a method for planning a trip route based on the state of travelers that affects driving risk the most: their state-of-mind. Had a long day or easily overwhelmed? This system will help you navigate a less stressful route home.

IBM inventors were awarded patents on innovations that will help advance cognitive healthcare. For example:

·        Using images to better gauge heart health: Cardiac disease categorization is challenging due to complexity of the heart. IBM researchers have developed a method for categorizing human heart disease states by using cardiac images to characterize the shape and motion of the heart. This could be used to aid doctors with the diagnosis of heart disease symptoms. 

·        A personalized hearing aid to meet your specific needs: Finding hearing aid devices personalized to meet the specific needs of individual users continues to be a challenge. IBM inventors developed a hearing aid device that can distinguish and filter voices and sounds. The device could be trained to distinguish sounds such as a smoke alarm and to listen intelligently to one’s environment while filtering some sounds and amplifying others to improve the user’s experience with the device.

·        Using drones to clean microbes in hospitals and agricultural fields: In this patent, surveying, testing and measuring contamination is controlled by a cognitive facility that manages drones. The drones could enter a contaminated area, collect specimens then confirm and map and sterilize contamination. This process is triggered by specific risks or performed on an ongoing basis. By collecting and sterilizing microbe samples through a drone, or fleet of drones, new insights into bacterial infections in the hospital, or farmland become possible.

IBM inventors also patented more than 1,600 inventions that can help advance the field of cloud computing. For example: 

·        Cognitive Cloud for your applications: Cloud Computing enables resiliency and availability of resources for applications. This patent pro-actively identifies hotspots in a cloud computing environment, including the server, storage and network where a resource constraint is likely to occur causing performance problems. The cloud learns parameters associated with a workload and provides an autonomic solution based on cloud resource usage for deployment or migration of applications. Another IBM innovation -- identifying a potential problem before it becomes an actual problem -- keeping your cloud computing environment running smoothly. 
· 
        Measurement and Integrated Reporting of Public Cloud Usage in a Hybrid Cloud Environment: Using a public cloud in a hybrid cloud environment provides both cost advantages as well as the availability of additional resources. The patent teaches an approach for provisioning public cloud resources and actively monitoring how much you are using at each public cloud. Unified usage reports describing the services supplied by multiple public cloud service providers are generated and provide detailed information on which of your users are consuming resources, who is proving those resources, and how much it costs. This innovation enables enterprises to monitor and measure employee and application usage and reduce information technology costs.

IBM inventors also received patents for inventions expected to enable new cybersecurity solutions. For example: 

·        Pre-emptively detecting and isolating cloud application network intrusions: Developers can build and deploy new applications faster and easier than ever thanks to the self-service model of cloud computing, resulting in rapid delivery of competitive value to the business. But those new applications still need rock-solid enterprise security in an age of more frequent and high-profile network intrusions. IBM inventors have developed an approach that allows developers to declare fine-grained security policies for their applications by specifying their required degree of isolation. When network breaches are detected, networking between applications - or their subcomponents - can be locked down to minimize the impact of an attack. Enabling rapid development of cloud-native applications, without abandoning the security that modern enterprises need -- another IBM innovation at work.

·        Managing incoming communications to prevent phishing and the spread of malicious content: As hackers become savvier, there is a need for more intelligent filtering of incoming communications that are sent to users. IBMers invented a system to create levels of permission and trust for inbound communications such as e-mails and text messages. This system determines a level of trustworthiness to assign to an inbound communication, and how much of that communication to forward on to a user. 

Highlighting its commitment to its transition management business, Northern Trust has hired Craig Blackbourn as head of transition management for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

This latest appointment supports Northern Trust’s continued investment in its global Capital Markets business which encompasses transition management, brokerage, foreign exchange and securities lending services.

In his new role, Blackbourn is responsible for offering institutional investors across the region transition management solutions that combine risk and project management with global trading expertise.

“Northern Trust is growing our global Capital Markets business and Craig’s appointment demonstrates our commitment to investing in our transition management capabilities for clients across EMEA,” said Andy Clayton, head of Northern Trust Capital Markets EMEA. “Northern Trust deploys a diversity of talent to each transition, bringing expertise from a suite of capital markets products to find the right solution to support our clients’ requirements.”

Blackbourn joins Northern Trust from Nomura International, where he was head of transition management, EMEA. During his career, he has also worked at Lehman Brothers, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Aberdeen Asset Management and both the custody and asset management businesses of Deutsche Bank. He brings more than 22 years of financial services experience to Northern Trust and reports to Ben Jenkins, global head of transition management at Northern Trust. 

“We are delighted about Craig joining our global team and look forward to his leadership for the EMEA transition management business,” said Jenkins. “Northern Trust’s heritage of risk management is built into the execution of our transitions no matter the complexity of the event. It is this approach, combined with our ability to provide a customised capital market solution for each transition, as well as our ability to hire industry experts, such as Craig, that sets us apart.” 

As further evidence of Northern Trust’s commitment to the Capital Markets business, it acquired an institutional equity brokerage business in 2016 to expand capabilities across the EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions. Northern Trust also announced an exclusive partnership with BEx LLC, a leading provider of software solutions in the financial technology sector, to deliver innovative foreign exchange (FX) solutions to meet the growing needs of its clients as they evolve their trading strategies and require increasingly sophisticated support and expertise.

Northern Trust has a 30-year track record of providing capital market solutions in foreign exchange, securities lending, transition management and institutional brokerage services to its diverse global client base.  It has more than 350 employees dedicated to providing capital markets services worldwide from offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Sydney.

Discretionary investment manager PortfolioMetrix has expanded its team with the addition of Gordon Butchers to the newly created role of Global Marketing Manager, reporting to Distribution Director, Dave Chessell.

Based in the UK the role has been created to support the firm’s UK growth plans plus its expansion within and outside the existing territories of UK, South Africa and Ireland during 2017.

The UK business celebrates its four-year anniversary in January and has a track record of consistently delivering risk controlled outcomes for clients. The South African arm has been operating for six years, with the Dublin-based office active since 2015.

Mike Roberts, PortfolioMetrix UK Managing Director comments “Our blend of user-friendly technology with high integrity investment expertise enables advisers to offer tailored investment solutions to all types of clients quickly and efficiently yet remain central to the process. It’s a model that’s proving popular with advisers across a range of territories and we have created the new role with the aim of coordinating our marketing effort to capitalise on what is, at present, a unique offering.”

Gordon Butchers brings a wealth of experience to the new role, having held senior marketing positions at specialist financial adviser software firm Intelliflo and international accountancy software provider Adra. His marketing experience also includes roles at Cofunds, two insurance providers plus specialist financial services marketing firms.

Dave Chessell, PortfolioMetrix Distribution Director comments: “We’re delighted to welcome Gordon to the team. His experience gives him a deep understanding of the impact of technology on the financial advice industry and the demand for solutions that allow adviser firms to grow effectively and efficiently.”

Silicon Valley analytics software firm FICO today announced that it has been accepted into the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield program, which requires FICO to agree to comply with EU data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union to the United States. Effective December 7, 2016, this voluntary self-certification declares FICO’s cooperation with the privacy program adopted jointly by the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“Joining the Privacy Shield further demonstrates our commitment to respecting the privacy of our clients and their customers,” said Vance Gudmundsen, regulatory counsel and privacy officer at FICO. “As a provider of powerful predictive analytics, we fully recognise the critical importance of data protection. Our clients can be confident that their information is handled in strict compliance with the Privacy Shield principles.”

FICO’s participation in the Privacy Shield means that data transfers of personal information from EU countries may be made to locations in the United States in compliance with EU privacy law. FICO has signed up for the Privacy Shield principles of notice; choice; onward transfer; security; data integrity and purpose limitation; access; and recourse, enforcement and liability.

“FICO has always been in legal compliance with EU privacy law, because we use Standard Contractual Clauses (sometimes called “model clauses”) in our client contracts,” Gudmundsen said. “The Standard Contractual Clauses give the data subjects legal rights under EU privacy law, and have been approved by the EU data protection authorities in all member countries.”

Administered by the International Trade Administration (ITA) within the U.S. Department of Commerce, and enforced in the United States by the Federal Trade Commission, the Privacy Shield imposes safeguards for U.S.-based organizations processing European data. It is the successor to the Safe Harbor framework, under which FICO had been self-certified from 2011 until the framework was overturned by the European Court of Justice in 2015.