Goldman Sachs Reportedly Hiring for Ops & Other News

In other news, HSBC embraces ETF asset-servicing, Bloomberg bolsters FXGO and TNS & TRAFiX collaborate.

Fed Concerns May Be Spurring Hiring Spree

Goldman Sachs Group has reportedly been on a hiring spree for back-office operations and its compliance department positions as a result of supervisory issues raised by Federal Reserve officials, according to multiple media reports, including those from Bloomberg and Reuters.

The Bloomberg report noted that the firm intends to hire several hundred employees in response to the banking supervisors, according to unnamed sources.

The firm is declining to comment upon the news reports.

“We are not permitted to comment on any supervisory matters related to our regulators. Therefore we are not able to comment on these reports,” according to a prepared statement from a spokesperson for Goldman Sachs.

A quick, anecdotal review of the job postings via the online job-matching website Glassdoor does list many openings for the Asset & Wealth Management group and the Marcus direct-to-consumer division of Goldman Sachs — many are for back-office fulfillment team openings.

In July, Goldman Sachs reported net revenues of $10.90 billion and net earnings of $1.22 billion for the second quarter ended June 30, 2023, according to official results. “Diluted earnings per common share (EPS) was $3.08 for the second quarter of 2023 and annualized return on average common shareholders’ equity (ROE) was 4.0 percent for the second quarter of 2023,” according to the firm.

Goldman Sachs has more than 10,000 employees serving the investment and asset management markets, officials say.

HSBC Launches ETF Asset-Servicing & Order Management Solutions

HSBC has launched an end-to-end platform that offers asset servicing solutions to global issuers of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) — dubbed the ETF Platform Solutions – and HSBC has partnered with Calastone to offer “a next-generation ETF Order Management system,” officials say.

HSBC’s Securities Services business, an administrator and custodian to the ETF industry in Europe and Asia “will be deploying the new ETF Order Management system across its global ETF client base, including issuers domiciled in Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia,” officials say.

“Under a single offering, ETF issuers will have access to HSBC’s Markets & Securities Services capabilities, such as: ETF order management, PCF (portfolio composition file) production, and custom ETF NAV (net asset value) attribution analysis,” according to the HSBC announcement.

In addition, the bank will offer “AP (authorized participant) services including ETF seeding and HSBC’s ETF fair value algorithms; swap provision and dedicated execution services under FX4ETFs; and HSBC FX Overlay Services,” officials say.

The ETF order management offering will use Calastone’s “cloud-based Distributed Market Infrastructure,” officials say.

The new ETF Order Management system “will deliver real-time processing and monitoring capabilities to ETF issuers throughout the ETF creation and redemption life cycle. From order placement through to settlement, HSBC’s digital data integration interfaces will deliver live analytics to ETF issuers and authorized participants as order executions are completed,” officials say.

“ETF issuers and authorized participants can benefit from improved operational and infrastructure efficiency in processing large volumes of ETF orders across our global footprint,” says Fiona Horsewill, global head of Securities Services, HSBC, in a statement.

Bloomberg Adds to Pricing Quality Analytics for FXGO

Bloomberg has added a suite of FX Pricing Quality tools that is intended to help end-users quickly “analyze and dissect” pricing quality and performance “for any RFQ pricing requests, including batch trades, sent over FXGO,” which is  Bloomberg’s multi-bank FX trading solution, officials say.

The pricing quality tools are available to FXGO clients through Bloomberg’s multi-asset reporting tool for electronic trading (MISX), officials say.

“Price makers can now utilize MISX Pricing Quality Analytics to more quickly identify where opportunities to price are being missed and why, such as due to internal counterparty setup, enablement issues, or internal credit rejects,” according to Bloomberg.

“By identifying instruments and currency pairs where they are missing flow because of pricing quality issues, price makers can better understand how and where to improve their setup and pricing quality to win more business over FXGO,” according to Bloomberg.

“The additional information, especially the ‘Best Alternative’ data, has enabled us to identify areas where we can further improve the pricing quality for our clients. The productivity efficiency we gain with this new feature is an important added value,” says Guillaume Carreno, global head of Electronic Client Connectivity, Crédit Agricole CIB, in a statement.

“Price takers can use MISX Pricing Quality Analytics to investigate how often a counterparty priced and won the trade, were runner up with the ‘Best Alternative’ price or placed somewhere in the pack,” according to Bloomberg.

“Price takers can also measure how often a counterparty declined to price, failed to pick up the request, or rejected a request to deal,” officials say. “These tools help to build a more complete picture as to where counterparty pricing quality is consistently superior as well as where and with whom pricing quality needs to improve.”

Bloomberg’s FXGO is a multi-bank FX trading platform offering access to liquidity through real-time pricing, workflow solutions, and analytics for price takers across the globe to negotiate FX transactions with their bank relationships, according to Bloomberg.

FXGO offers streaming or RFQ for spot, outrights, swaps, NDFs, deposits and options in any currency pair and tenor, along with access to algorithmic order solutions offered by more than 30 top providers, according to Bloomberg.

“FXGO also integrates with multiple third-party order management, treasury management, and accounting systems and facilitates straight through processing (STP) in a variety of flexible formats, creating a seamless and efficient investment workflow,” Bloomberg adds.

TNS & TRAFiX Launch Trading Infrastructure Collaboration   

Transaction Network Services (TNS) reports that trading and connectivity solutions provider TRAFiX will expand its order execution and routing management systems via TNS’s Dedicated Server across all Canadian financial exchange markets.

“Based out of the Equinix TR2 Data Center in Toronto, TRAFiX will leverage the full-stack TNS Dedicated Server offering to optimize its custom hardware and trading connectivity requirements,” officials say. “TRAFiX will also use the recently launched TNS Cloud Server Management solution, which easily handles operating system installation, configuration, and patching as well as monitoring, troubleshooting, and access management.”

“The TNS bare-metal server inventory allows TRAFiX to efficiently scale and support our customers’ order management systems, execution management systems and Financial Information eXchange (FIX) routing capabilities in Canada and around the world,” says Greg Perry, chief operating officer for TRAFiX, in a statement.

TRAFiX via the TNS Dedicated Server “has access to nine standardized server options that have been optimized for front and middle office trading infrastructure to meet the specific computing needs of TRAFiX and its clients,” officials say. “TNS Dedicated Server is designed to deliver low latency performance of trading applications with multiple dedicated server options available. TNS’ server inventory and cloud-managed data center services facilitate rapid installation and solve hardware supply chain and server management challenges for TRAFiX.”

TNS has network operations centers in the US, UK, Australia, and Malaysia, officials say.