Mellon Capital, the San Francisco-based investment boutique of BNY Mellon, has launched its Carbon Efficiency Strategy with $100 million in funding from The McKnight Foundation.  The strategy is designed to provide investors with lower carbon emissions exposure than the broad U.S. equity benchmark.

Mellon Capital developed the Carbon Efficiency Strategy in collaboration with Mercer, a global consulting leader in talent, health, retirement and investments. Imprint Capital, a registered investment advisor that works with foundations, families, and financial institutions, also contributed. The strategy invests in the broad U.S. stock market, underweighting inefficient carbon emitters, such as utilities over-exposed to coal generation, while overweighting companies with lower carbon intensities. Additionally, the strategy bars investments in coal mining and production companies.

Carbon intensity is defined as greenhouse gas emissions per unit of sales.

McKnight is a Minneapolis, MN-based family foundation working across multiple programs and geographies to improve the quality of life for present and future generations. The creation of the Mellon Capital Carbon Efficiency Strategy followed McKnight's June 2014 announcement of an impact investing commitment of $200 million to support transitions to a low-carbon economy and sustainable regional development in Minneapolis-St. Paul. McKnight's $100 million investment in the Carbon Efficiency Strategy is in addition to that previously announced commitment.

McKnight's President Kate Wolford said, "Innovative new approaches like the Carbon Efficiency Strategy give foundations leverage in choosing how to invest, and how we engage with businesses as shareholders. This supports McKnight's commitment to accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy."

"The goal of our Carbon Efficiency Strategy is to provide broad U.S. equity exposure, while minimizing investment in companies with inefficient carbon emissions and emphasizing companies that are committed to more efficient operations," said Gabby Parcella, chief executive officer of Mellon Capital. "We are seeing growing numbers of foundations, universities and other institutional investors across the globe interested in impact investing where they can address environmental challenges through their investment portfolios."

"We overweight environmentally efficient companies because we believe they may realize a competitive advantage," Parcella said.

Mellon Capital, a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, incorporates an engagement approach into the strategy through investor initiatives and shareholder resolutions. Mellon Capital is also a signatory to the CDP Climate Change, Water and Forestry programs, which works with market forces to motivate companies to disclose and reduce their impacts on the environmental and natural resources and is a respondent through BNY Mellon's program response, which earned a prefect disclosure and performance score for both 2013 and 2014.

Compass Plus, an international provider of innovative retail banking and electronic payments software to processors and financial institutions, has announced that it has successfully completed the implementation of its open development payments platform TranzAxis with Klarna, a leading European online payment provider. Klarna makes online payments easier and safer, enabling consumers to purchase goods using just their email address and postcode, cutting out the need for passwords.

The TranzAxis platform, which was implemented in just six months, will lay the foundation for Klarna’s global expansion. It was selected as the platform that best suited the innovative culture within Klarna, enabling the online payment provider to utilise their own existing R&D capabilities to develop and launch new services quickly and cost-effectively. Due to its flexible and agile nature, TranzAxis offers the payment provider a future-proof option for their system development.

The project, which went live on 1 July 2014 with the launch of Klarna’s first UK merchant customer, included the integration of third party systems as well as the launch of Klarna’s pay after delivery service, which gives consumers the opportunity to pay for goods after they are delivered. TranzAxis manages all Klarna accounts and settlement with merchants, acquirers and banks.  

“Klarna's mission is to simplify buying and to make Klarna the world's favourite way to buy. To facilitate this we need to be able to go to market with new products quickly, while never jeopardising quality and stability. We want to be adaptive to customer needs and market trends, while keeping the core robustness of a bank. We have chosen to use TranzAxis as transaction engine for our global expansion as we believe this will enable us to move fast to new markets while never risking losing core stability,” says Yuval Samet, Chief Product Officer at Klarna.

“Today’s consumers expect a fast, easy and convenient way of making purchases online. Klarna’s offering is at the forefront of the industry providing a unique and simplified payment process,” said Andrey Chirkov, Senior Vice President & Chief Global Sales Officer at Compass Plus. “By working closely with the highly skilled team at Klarna, we have ensured the smooth and quick entrance of the company into one of the most competitive markets in Europe with a very innovative new product. Klarna is an impressive partner and has helped establish TranzAxis as a platform that can truly deliver in the alternative payments arena, opening new horizons in the ever evolving payments industry.”

Fidessa group plc (LSE: FDSA) has been judged Best Execution Management System at the Financial News Awards for Excellence in Trading & Technology. Presented at a gala dinner in London on Wednesday, the award is testament to Fidessa's ongoing programme of development of its Investment Management System (IMS).
A key part of Fidessa IMS – an integrated workflow platform covering the entire investment lifecycle – the firm's multi-asset Execution Management System gives asset managers total control of the execution process and provides connectivity to more than 800 brokers, broker algorithms and global cross-asset DMA destinations.
Commenting on the win, Richard Hooke, Buy-side Product Director at Fidessa, said: "We’ve worked extremely hard and invested heavily to ensure that our solutions continue to meet the needs of market participants. With a customer base that spans a wide range of firms, from large institutional managers to boutique hedge funds, we deliver the reliability and functionality that they require in today's complex and cost-conscious marketplace. This award is testament to that and we're delighted to have been recognised by the industry in this way."
Fidessa IMS provides the buy-side community with sophisticated portfolio management, real-time position management, compliance, order management, routing and execution capabilities. Delivered via a unique combination of software and managed services, it provides an optimised cost-of-ownership model.
The Financial News Awards for Excellence in Trading & Technology are independent and fee-free, drawing on anecdotal information from analysts, sell-side and buy-side firms, exchanges, clearing houses and industry experts, as well as empirical data, to draw up a shortlist. An independent panel of more than 50 judges comprising established industry veterans and experts votes on this shortlist.

Lombard Risk Management plc, a leading provider of integrated collateral management, regulatory compliance and reporting solutions for the financial services industry, announced its latest release of COLLINE—the company’s award-winning collateral management, clearing, inventory management and optimisation solution.

Lombard Risk’s COLLINE enables firms to move away from managing collateral in business silos by supporting multiple business lines on a single platform therefore enabling firms to significantly better manage their collateral inventory and optimise to ensure the best use of it—addressing the issues of limited liquidity and lower capital charges.  COLLINE version 13 enhancements and new functionality includes:

• Regulatory Enhancements – supporting clients in meeting their IOSCO and Basel III regulatory commitments.
• User-definable Optimisation Rule Builder – used to create and combine optimisation rules for flexible scenario analysis and optimum allocation of collateral.
• Configurable Inventory Manager - providing real-time scenario analysis across financial products and business lines in order to best manage collateral inventory on a firm-wide basis.
• Enhanced Collateral Substitution Workflow - automating complex, time-consuming manual processes related to substitutions enabling managers to deal with high volumes more efficiently.

“There are many regulatory issues such as Dodd-Frank/EMIR, IOSCO and Basel III that firms need to adhere to and COLLINE is constantly being enhanced to meet both market and regulatory requirements,” commented John Wisbey, Chief Executive Officer, Lombard Risk.  “Thanks to the experience of our dedicated collateral team and the detailed insight provided by our clients we aim to ensure that COLLINE remains the system-of-choice for firms to manage all aspects of their collateral efficiently.”

 “It is Lombard Risk’s strategy to provide clients with one solution that combines multiple  aspects of optimisation—trade, inventory and collateral—on a single platform,” commentedHelen Nicol, Product Director, COLLINE, Lombard Risk.  “COLLINE’S strengths in collateral optimisation focuses on its flexible and configurable rule builder offering several algorithms, which in turn drives the allocation process according to the rules selected.  The ‘what if’ functionality provides pre-trade and impact analysis for front office decision making.”

COLLINE® – collateral management, clearing, inventory management and optimisation.
Designed by experienced business practitioners for consolidated end-to-end, cross-product collateral management, clearing, inventory aggregation and optimisation.

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) has revealed a significant increase in demand for its revenue and expense management offerings, as financial services firms continue to face stringent regulatory and compliance requirements and a growing need for transparency in the industry.

Broadridge has continued to strengthen its solutions offering since it acquired Bonaire Software Solutions in July 2013. By enhancing product development, the firm has brought a more robust product set to market that addresses strategic business challenges in fee management across the financial services industry. Broadridge’s fully integrated revenue and expense management offering provides industry-leading solutions for fee and expense management through in-house installation, SaaS and Business Process Outsourcing. In the past year, Broadridge has added more than 20 new clients, and has seen continued traction in its SaaS offering.

“The heightened scrutiny around fee arrangements drove a strong year of growth for our revenue and expense management solutions, including the addition of more than 20 new clients,” said Christopher John, President, Revenue & Expense Management, Mutual Fund & Retirement Solutions, Broadridge. “Mutual funds and asset managers are demanding innovative solutions that provide transparency and create accurate forecasting, ROI analysis and defined processes for managing and auditing fee arrangements. We remain focused on continuing to enhance our offering of technology driven solutions that empower our clients to manage the wide ranging fee arrangements in place today and drive business.”

With the integration of the Bonaire solutions offering complete, Bonaire’s team of experts in the revenue and expense management space are now fully operating as part of Broadridge’s Mutual Fund & Retirement Solutions Group under the Broadridge Financial Solutions name.

“To succeed in this current environment, financial firms need to differentiate themselves, grow assets and meet their compliance mandates. We continue to strengthen the value we bring to our clients by investing in our mutual fund and retirement solutions business and end-to-end product offerings.  With a robust set of innovative solutions, we are well positioned to help mutual funds, asset managers, retirement providers, distributors, and investors succeed in today’s marketplace,” said Gerard Scavelli, President, Mutual Fund & Retirement Solutions, Broadridge.

Lombard Risk Management plc (LSE:LRM), a leading global provider of collateral management, liquidity and regulatory reporting and compliance solutions for the financial services industry, has announced its interim results for the six months ended 30^th September 2014.

Highlights

·      Revenue of £9.3m (2013: £7.3m) up 27.7%, supported by an order book of contracted revenue at £5.1m (2013: £5.4m).

·      121 COREP contracts now signed with 62 being for new names.

·      EBITDA of £0.8m (2013 restated: loss of £0.02m) following revenue growth partially offset by increased staffing levels to deliver additional contracts.

·      Profit before tax of £0.01m (2013 restated loss: £0.5m).

·      Cash at period end of £2.2m (2013: £1.8m) with reduction in debt to £0.3m (2013: £1.0m).

·      Continued investment in European Banking Authority regulatory initiatives including COREP and FINREP, the COLLINE® Optimisation module, and the next generation of REPORTER.

·      Interim dividend of 0.035p (2013: 0.030p) per Ordinary Share.

Chief Executive Officer, John Wisbey, commented on the results:

“The Company achieved a record first half revenue of £9.3 million, up 27.7% on the previous year, and as we again expect our revenues to be weighted towards the second half, this bodes well for our full year performance. The revenue rise was driven, in part, by our regulatory programme for the European Banking Authority’s COREP exceeding management expectations, with 121 clients now signed up for COREP, but we also signed some useful deals for COLLINE® our collateral management platform.”

“The outlook for revenue growth remains promising, with market and regulatory environments continuing to favour the Company’s product positioning in regulation, compliance and risk management despite a tough budgetary environment in the financial sector. In addition, the investment we have made in the last year can be expected to stand us in good stead in the years to come.”