Charles River Development (Charles River), an award-winning provider of financial software and services to the global investment management community, today announced that Sanlam Prime Services (SPS), a Johannesburg-based prime brokerage business and wholly owned subsidiary of Sanlam Capital Markets, is the first prime broker to implement the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) to streamline the front- to middle-office operations of hedge funds. SIM’s GenX Statistical Arbitrage Hedge Fund, managed by Dr. Nafees Hossain, and other SPS hedge fund clients will benefit from extensive portfolio management tools, streamlined trade order management and execution, and real-time pre-trade and batched compliance testing and monitoring on a single integrated platform for derivatives, fixed income, foreign exchange and equities. SPS plans to roll out Charles River IMS to three more South African hedge fund clients by the end of 2008.
"In today’s increasingly competitive South African hedge fund market, managers continue to differentiate their fund offerings by establishing more specialized and complex strategies. In creating the SPS technology offering we focused on supporting our client’s unique edge by providing them with the best possible front office solution." said Terence Naidu, co-head, SPS. "A recent high-profile compliance breach has caused the Financial Services Board to tighten regulations in this market. The built-in compliance module made Charles River IMS a must have for SPS.
"Charles River IMS is a natural fit for the hedge fund market in South Africa. Charles River has four buy side clients in South Africa already and numerous hedge fund clients around the world. This makes us confident that our first prime brokerage client will successfully leverage Charles River IMS’s best of breed technology to increase trading efficiency and operational transparency."
"Charles River has been serving South African buy side firms since 2006," said Jon Steward, managing director-EMEA, Charles River Development. "The system supports all asset classes and can easily handle the mixture of strategy trading, derivatives and traditional equity and fixed income that is typical in South African hedge fund portfolios. Also, Charles River IMS’ open architecture means it’s easy to integrate with third-party systems."
