Frankfurt-headquartered asset manager Union Investment has incorporated OTAS Technologies’ platform, bolstering its decision-making capabilities with the vendor’s big-data analytics engine.
OTAS runs an alerting service designed to flag up potential trading opportunities and risks on existing trades, delivered through a cloud-based mechanism. The firm, which has over EUR220 billion ($274 billion) in assets under management, is also using the vendor’s Trade Shaper platform.
Former England and Bath rugby international Halliday has played in a World Cup final and held down top jobs in the City at UBS and Lehman Brothers, but his proudest achievement is the Twickenham match he organized for Help for Heroes in 2007 which raised £1.5 million. A second rugby match in 2011 raised £800,000., with a follow-up beach rugby tournament also raising big sums for the charity. Halliday is patron of Cardiac Risk in the Young, a charity he became involved with after his friend Howard English, a former banker at Morgan Grenfell, died from a preventable heart condition aged 30, followed by his son 10 years later. The money that Halliday – now a fintech executive – has helped raise has aided the opening of cardiac research unit at the Royal Brompton Hospital.
OTAS Technologies has positioned itself as a provider of real-time, live market-data analytics that can put the portfolio manager on an even information footing with the trader. Among major buy-side institutions, Franklin Templeton is one of OTAS’ major customers, and seven of the top ten institutions by AUM are customers, according to CEO Tom Doris.
“The overriding theme for us in 2014 has been the growth awareness in the buy side and the sell side of the need for analytics, not just metrics but actual analytics that extract information from data,” Doris told Markets Media.