International Bytes

JP Morgan has acquired a majority holding in FundsHub, Europe's first outsourced fund supermarket solutions provider.

JPMorgan is buying founder-shareholder Investia's holding in FundsHub for an undisclosed sum. The FundsHub management team and JPMorgan, via JPMorgan Investor Services and JPMorgan Investor Services, are injecting sufficient new capital into the business to take it through to profitability.

"This additional commitment to FundsHub is evidence of our continuing belief in the increasingly important role that funds supermarkets will play in Europe as open architecture becomes the norm," said Mark Tennant, senior vice president, JPMorgan Investor Services. "Estimates from leading industry research companies suggest that funds supermarkets will be a very important method of fund distribution. One such survey, suggests that as much as 25% of net European inflow to funds will be via funds supermarkets by 2004."

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American Express Bank in Singapore has installed i-Wealthview Banking software from Fincentric Corporation, a global provider of wealth management and next generation banking software.

The implementation at American Express Bank in Singapore is part of a global licensing and servicing agreement to implement Fincentric's i-Wealthview Banking software for American Express Bank, the international banking subsidiary of American Express Company, in six countries.

"We are pleased to be meeting our commitments to American Express Bank on its international banking initiative," said Mike Cardiff, president and CEO of Fincentric. "Our software is designed to provide customer-centricity and Customer Value Management capabilities that support strategies for increasing customer acquisition, retention and profitability."

The Singapore production follows a similar implementation of i-Wealthview Banking at American Express Bank in Hong Kong in September 2001.

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F&C Management Ltd. (formerly Foreign & Colonial), London, will use RadianzNet, a global financial extranet created by New York-based Radianz, to route orders that utilize the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) messaging standard to brokers worldwide.

RadianzNet is an open Internet Protocol-based platform for trading and other financial e-commerce that can handle a variety of message formats. Radianz's rFIX feature enables the use of FIX messaging between counter parties.

Salomon Smith Barney, UBS Warburg, Merrill Lynch, CSFB, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Deutsche Bank, and others will be among the first firms to trade with F&C via RadianzNet.

"Radianz understands our business and has an extranet with the market reach that can bring together trading partners in a quick, smooth and cost-effective manner," said Alan Line, F&C's director of dealing. "We also believe Radianz has the commitment and vision to become the dominant FIX network solution for the global equity community."