Charles River Development Signs South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation
Government investment agency to benefit from Charles River’s regional commitment and expertise
Boston, London, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo — August 5, 2009 — Charles River Development (Charles River), an award-winning provider of financial software and services to the global investment management community, today announced that Public Investment Corporation Ltd (PIC), one of the largest investment managers in Africa with approximately USD100 billion in assets under management (AUM), has selected the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) for its fixed income trading and portfolio management operations, with the possibility to extend the system to manage equities in the future.
“Like any government agency, we follow a very strict and extensive procurement process,” said Leon Smit, Head of Fixed Income, PIC. “Our clients are public sector entities who have varied investment mandates which have been approved by the Financial Services Board (FSB), so our trading and portfolio management environment is closely controlled. We needed an order and execution management system flexible enough to meet any client demand.”
“With Charles River we can now easily handle South Africa-specific market regulations, ‘what if’ scenario analysis and fixed income pricing,” continued Smit. “Charles River understands our market better than any other vendor we reviewed. They have proven their commitment to South Africa by developing their solution in line with local buy side needs. We are confident we have selected the best system available.”
“PIC joins Charles River’s growing South African client base, which includes the country’s leading financial institutions: ABSA Capital, Metropolitan Asset Management, Prudential Portfolio Managers, Sanlam Prime Services and STANLIB Asset Management. We serve the South African market through local presence and client events that continually address the needs and suggestions of the client base,” said Jon Steward, Managing Director, EMEA, Charles River Development.
Recent Charles River client events in Cape Town and Johannesburg showcased the latest Charles River IMS capabilities, which include specific regional enhancements such as fixed income valuations. Clients found the event a useful opportunity to meet with peers, discuss ideas and provide feedback to Charles River’s management.
“We valued seeing Charles River IMS’ new analytics capabilities, fixed income pricing feeds and the dynamic user interface,” said Shawn Smith, Chief Technology Officer, STANLIB Asset Management. “The capabilities are impressive, and we’re looking forward to participating in Charles River IMS’ next beta program.”
About Public Investment Corporation Limited
Public Investment Corporation Limited (PIC) manages assets valued at R786,8 billion as at 31 March 2008, making us one of the largest investment managers on the African continent. Our clients are public sector entities, most of which are pension, provident, social security or guardian funds. PIC’s role is to invest funds on behalf of these clients, based on investment mandates set by each client and approved by the Financial Services Board (FSB), with which we are registered as a financial services provider.
PIC is wholly owned by the South African government, with the Minister of Finance as shareholder representative. PIC was established as a corporation on 1 April 2005 in accordance with the Public Investment Corporation Act, 2004. Corporatization has enabled us to structure our investment activities and operations in a manner comparable to that of private sector investment managers. Apart from pursuing FSB-compliant mandates, we benchmark our investment performance against market-driven indices, enabling our clients and shareholder to compare PIC’s returns to those achieved in the marketplace.
About Charles River Development
Charles River Development is an award-winning provider of technology systems and services to over 315 investment firms in the institutional, mutual fund, banking, hedge fund, wealth management, insurance and pension industries in more than 30 countries. The Charles River Investment Management System is a comprehensive front- and middle-office software suite for all asset classes that includes: Charles River Manager for portfolio management and modeling; Charles River Trader for order management and electronic trading; Charles River Compliance for real-time pre-trade and end-of-day compliance; and Charles River Post-Trade for the centralized management of trade matching, confirmation, and settlement workflow. The system incorporates global real-time electronic trading via FIX (Financial Information eXchange) through the Charles River Network, a broker-neutral financial network that is fully integrated with Charles River IMS.
Charles River IMS features a modern, proven, N-Tier service oriented architecture (SOA) that is highly scalable and supports continuous 24x7 operations. Message-based APIs and exposed Web Services facilitate rapid systems integration.
The company also offers implementation, application management services and hosting. Founded in 1984, Charles River maintains headquarters in Boston and primary offices in London, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo.
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