Cognotec forges FX alliance with Bloomberg


4 Aug 2004

Irish foreign exchange (FX) software player Cognotec has forged a strategic content alliance with news and data provider Bloomberg to enable Bloomberg Professional customers to connect to the e-commerce pricing engines of some of the world’s leading banks.

The deal is a shift away from some of the more negative press surrounding Cognotec founder Brian Macabba’s recent embroilment in a slander action in the UK High Court over alleged sexual slurs.

Dublin and London-based Cognotec was established in the early 1990s and has received investment from Japan-based Softbank, which also has a stake in Yahoo!, the web portal giant.

Bloomberg and Cognotec have been working together since last year and have already introduced a phase one service deployment. This phase allows Bloomberg clients to customise requests for streaming bank name attributed FX prices delivered from banks’ e-commerce platforms. Currently, several banks are live on the phase one service as part of a controlled introduction, with a number of banks in the deployment pipeline.

In phase two, Bloomberg clients will access real-time, streaming executable rates simultaneously from multiple banks of their choosing. In addition, clients will be able to customise their price requests dynamically based on currency pair, instrument, amount and value date. Users will have the ability to click and deal on the streaming rates, with executed transactions being credit checked and automatically displayed in both the banks’ and clients’ trade blotters. This new service will be available later in the year.

“As part of Bloomberg’s initiative to provide a premier service to the global FX marketplace, we have selected certain industry leaders in FX automation,” according to David Martin, global head of goreign exchange for Bloomberg.

“Cognotec complements our broader strategy well. This alliance brings together the world’s leading banks, giving them the ability to enable their customers to see their FX rates and now execute on them via the Bloomberg Professional service. With Bloomberg’s more than 190,000 users worldwide, our distribution reach is a perfect fit with Cognotec’s price discovery and execution solutions.”

Commenting on the partnership, John Beckert, president of Cognotec International said: “Using our considerable investment in bank e-commerce technology, and Bloomberg’s vast global distribution capabilities, together we can offer the marketplace a seamless link between the buy and sell side. By introducing fully executable streaming rates capability in a multi-bank environment, this initiative will significantly improve the quality and efficiency of the foreign exchange markets for both banks and clients.”

By John Kennedy