International Bytes

UniCredit Banca Mobiliare adds STP capability to its existing front-to-back Summit infrastructure; DekaBank has gone live with a decision support software package for trading departments from SunGard Investment Management Systems; KBC Bank & Insurance Group selects an S1 system to power its commercial banking services throughout Europe.

Milan-based UniCredit Banca Mobiliare (UBM), part of UniCredito Italiano Group, Italy's largest investment bank, has updated its existing front-to-back Summit infrastructure to become STP compliant.

The bank has added the latest and most advanced real-time STP capabilities, real-time hedging, credit and commercial lending instrument support, and a new Internet toolkit. The bank's new STP Operations software will make full use of Summit's real-time, event-driven trade processing capabilities.

"Summit's STP products will automatically handle data flows from external systems, rate resets, documentation generation and transmission, payment netting calculations, miscellaneous data entry tasks...the list goes on and on," said Cesare Tagliabue, program manager at UniCredit Banca Mobiliare. "It will also give our traders and risk managers additional sophisticated analysis tools--like the new real-time hedge engine--to make informed business decisions."

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DekaBank, the Frankfurt-based central institution owned jointly by the German Landesbanks and the Sparkassen, has gone live with Decalog, a decision support software package for trading departments, from SunGard Investment Management Systems, an international provider of investment management solutions for the front-, middle- and back-office activities of global asset management firms.

Decalog will provide DekaBank with decision support and help its trading department streamline workflow to achieve straight-through processing.

"Two years ago, we decided to change our investment management process and organize our structure between three different business areas: research decision, portfolio construction and implementation of a trading desk," said Dr. Wolfgang Leoni, member of the management board of DekaBank's subsidiary Deka Investment GmbH. "To support these departments and efficiently manage 1,000 portfolios, we needed a flexible and best-of-breed investment solution. Decalog offers an extensive functional coverage for portfolio modeling, trading and decision support and helps us achieve operational efficiency."

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KBC Bank & Insurance Group, Belgium, has selected S1 Corporate Banking to power its commercial banking services throughout Europe.

KBC will leverage S1 Corporate Banking to offer best of breed capabilities and standardize all corporate electronic banking operations throughout the KBC Group.

"With a strong European presence and extensive expertise in the corporate banking area, S1 was the best partner for KBC to deliver superior online banking functionality to our commercial customer base while managing our total cost of ownership," said Luc Gijsens, global head of Corporate Banking at KBC.