For A Hedge Fund Headquartered in New York having Trading desks across London and Hong Kong

The Challenge

The client is a privately owned hedge fund sponsor founded in 1990 with headquarters in New York. The firm has operational offices in London and Honk Kong. The firm provides its services to pooled investment vehicles. It invests in the public equity and fixed income markets across the globe. The firm makes its investments in distressed debt and stocks of companies that are undergoing corporate restructuring including mergers; spin-offs; liquidations; and recapitalizations. It also utilizes an event-driven approach including merger arbitrage, long/short, and convertible arbitrage strategy to select its securities.

Having implemented Charles River IMS as their order management system, the client needed to build and support Report Suite consuming Charles River IMS data (real-time and delayed) for compliance and product control. With their existing home grown data warehouse, the client wanted to enhance and support data interface for designing/ developing real-time customizable PnL framework sliced by geography and strategy.

The challenge was also to reduce the post Charles River IMS implementation support cost for providing global application support for business users spread across New York, London and Hong Kong trading desk.

The Solution

Synechron acquired the project based on its technical expertise backed with solid Hedge Fund implementation knowledge. Synechron has a seasoned team of techno-functional developers with experience in Buy-Side Capital Markets domain and competency in creating customizable framework solutions around 3rd party products.

Synechron put together a Global Delivery team comprising of a dynamic onsite technology lead and a techno-functional developer along with a smart offshore team comprising of program manager, technology lead, support lead, techno-functional developers and application support personnel. Using the obvious cost savings of a Global Delivery Model, Synechron placed a strong offshore application support team that was able to deliver budgeted support solutions to the client in a limited time frame.

With Synechron resources having prior end to end Charles River IMS background, it allowed molding into client expectations seamlessly while adding value to the overall data exchange process and enhancing user experience. Synechron’s team understood the existing data setup including home grown Reporting Warehouse / Pricing Engine / Security Master.

Synechron proposed and implemented automated SOD process for refreshing Charles River IMS replacing manual interface and reducing errors / slippages by taking workflow driven approach via SQL Server Integration Service around in-house Data Warehouse. Synechron’s techno-functional development team designed and developed real time PnL framework sliced by geography and strategy based on last business day positions and intraday trading activity with live feed from Bloomberg and Charles River IMS. Synechron developed a reporting suite for intraday compliance and end of day operation activities using thin client, separating Data and client, keeping reports light weight.

At present, along with Charles River IMS support, Synechron is simultaneously engaged with the client in enhancement and support of Advent Geneva, Open STARS Electra and design and development of front office and back office reporting. Synechron’s Remote Infrastructure Management team is also engaged with the client for providing 24x7 Global System support to business users and trading desk spread across New York, London and Hong Kong offices.

The Result

• Synechron enabled the client to establish structured, traceable, and automated Start of Day processing around Charles River IMS which earlier was done manually, was error prone and people dependant.
• Synechron's team of techno-functional developers worked directly with traders for building PnL framework which is currently used by desk / analyst to build and unwind trades across listed and OTC products.
• Synechron built a strong Global (Offshore + Onshore) awareness on Charles River IMS interfaces for Real-Time reporting / Start of Day Processing / various downstream systems feeds specifically around large scale Hedge Funds, allowing the client to save on support cost post Charles River IMS implementation.
• Synechron aided client established structured Support Communication Channel with Charles River helpdesk and worked on resolution from Synechron’s offshore location at Pune.

The Platform

• Visual Studio .NET 4.0 (Windows based application suite)
• SQL Server 2008 Database
• SQL Server Integration Service
• SQL Server Reporting Service
• Advent Geneva
• Advent Partner
• Open STARS Electra

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