Newsletter April 2008

Passion for change – new design for Cinnober

We are proud to introduce our new website and our completely new graphic profile, both aimed at better presenting our way of thinking and working.

We live in an environment with an accelerating pace of constant changes. When we analyzed the successful ventures we have created with our customers over the years, we could identify a number of success factors.

Some of the most important factors have of course been technical, but many have also involved the people factor – the personal connections, the trust and the persistence in these relations. At Cinnober this is part of our normal routine when we take on a new challenge, and something our customers tell us sets us apart from our competitors.

There is an additional factor that characterizes the joint work we perform; a passion for change. All successful initiatives are based on change and the ability to see the opportunities that accompany the change.

So we would highlight “Passion for change” as a key platform for any new initiative. Passionate about working with you, seizing opportunities and turning change into a competitive advantage, whenever change occurs. This is the promise we have been living for the last ten years now and we look forward to continuing to do so.

When it comes to the new graphic profile we hope that you find it a bit more personal and a bit more flexible. Just the way we want to be when working with you.

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Markit BOAT™ – release 1.1

Markit and Cinnober have recently provided Markit BOAT’s clients with release 1.1 of the service. Markit BOAT™, a MiFID-compliant trade reporting platform, was launched on 1 November 2007 and already accounts for reporting approximately a fourth of all European OTC trades in equities.

Release 1.1 includes substantial enhancements to the trade reporting functionality as well as extended lists and report outputs for the Markit BOAT™ system.

“It is always a pleasure for us to help our customers exploit their potential and become even more successful”, says Jan Arpi, partner and CEO of Cinnober Financial Technology AB. “Release 1.1 was well received and Markit continues to develop its offering. Our product provides Markit BOAT™ with a technical solution designed to meet the challenges of change that their clients are facing.”

Markit BOAT™ enables investment firms to meet their pre-trade quoting and post-trade reporting obligations for all their European OTC trades in equities. The platform collects, collates, validates and stores OTC trade data and publishes it to the market in real-time.

With 24 of the world’s leading financial institutions using the platform to report their OTC trades in equities, Markit BOAT™ offers an unparalleled view of the European OTC equity markets. Prior to MiFID and the launch of the platform, OTC trade information in certain countries was not readily available, making it difficult for market participants to understand fully how the OTC markets were moving.

The Markit BOAT™ platform, provided by Cinnober, was previously owned by a consortium of nine investment banks before its acquisition by Markit, a leading provider of independent data, portfolio valuations and OTC derivatives trade processing, in January 2008.

For further info; please visit Markit BOAT’s website by clicking here

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New office on Wall Street

Cinnober continues its expansion with an office on Wall Street. We have several North American electronic marketplaces on our client list and over the last six months we have announced several highly prestigious orders, such as those from Alpha Trading Systems and the Turquoise consortium.

“This is yet another milestone for Cinnober and our expansion,” comments Jan Arpi, Cinnober’s CEO. “Establishing our own office on Wall Street is a logical step when you view our record on the market. Of course, we’ve been active here in New York for years, but now the timing is right for us to move into our own premises. Through our direct presence we will be better able to serve our customers in the region.”

The new office will serve as regional headquarters, primarily focusing on the US and Canadian markets. Our customers in the region include Alpha Trading Systems, the American Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange and Quadriserv.

If you missed the housewarming party earlier this month, please stay tuned, as there may be some new activities soon.

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Meet us in Paris

The TradeTech Trading and Technology Summit is taking place 22-25 April in Paris. It is an excellent opportunity to meet and find out more about the challenges and opportunities of a changing market.

Over the past 18 months Cinnober has been involved in some of the most groundbreaking projects in the post-MiFID world.

We delivered the transaction technology platform to Markit BOAT and are currently hosting its pre- and post-trade reporting platform. We delivered a complete Systematic Internalization platform to one of the worlds leading banks – in less than eight weeks! We are currently delivering the core marketplace technology, including hosting and operation, to Turquoise, the new pan-European equity trading initiative.

If you visit us at TradeTech, you can get the details and find out more about our offerings, especially solutions for Systematic Internalization, Internal Crossing and Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTFs).

Representatives from Cinnober will be Peter Kazinczy, Mons Johansson, Nils-Robert Persson and Johan Asplund.

If you’d like to book some time with us, just drop a line to: sales@cinnober.com and we will confirm back to you.

Read more about TradeTech by visiting the official website here

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10th anniversary

This year Cinnober celebrates its 10th anniversary. Cinnober was founded in 1998 by a couple of guys from the then booming IT industry in Sweden. Each of them had in one way or another been developing trading systems for many years before setting up Cinnober.

Cinnober started as a small consulting company. But business took off very rapidly in 2000 when Cinnober got its first order from the American Stock Exchange. As trust grew, we also got much larger follow-on orders and we grew quickly.

In 2004, we were designated “Super-Gazelle” of the year by business daily Dagens Industri, for being the fastest growing company in Sweden. We had less than 50 employees then.

Cinnober aggressively targeted the largest global players in the exchange sector, winning business from famous names such as the American Stock Exchange, Borsa Italiana, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, Liffe NYSE Euronext, London Metal Exchange and Nord Pool. The TRADExpress Java-based technology is at the heart of our offerings.

The change that came with technical developments, and which has been accelerated by regulatory initiatives such as MiFID, has resulted in new opportunities in a more fragmented market. Not least has this been shown in recent years through new market players such as banks and bank consortia that now are beginning to compete with their own marketplace offerings.

They all need solutions which are MiFID-compliant and which support best execution on a highly competitive market. This applies not only to the likes of MTFs and ATSs, but also to banks acting as Systematic Internalizers. The driving forces in the financial industry right now are consolidation combined with the challenges these new entrants bring to existing structures.

Under these changed market circumstances, Cinnober has concluded deals in Europe over the past 18 months with Markit BOAT, Deutsche Bank and Turquoise. There are also similar forces driving the deal with Alpha Trading Systems in Toronto, Canada.

Today our staff now number over 130 and the business is expanding fast. In late 2007 we moved into new premises in central Stockholm. Earlier this month we opened a new office on Wall Street, in order to better serve our growing number of customers in North America.

The conclusion is that today we’re very well positioned to continue serving the industry with our first-class systems and we are looking forward to the next ten years, which we believe are going to be as fantastic as the first ten were.

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