WestLB AG is one of Germany’s leading financial services providers, with group total assets of € 253.8 billion as of December 31, 2004. Its Prop Desk manages cross asset portfolios of traded instruments and employs a range of trading strategies including equity long/short, volatility arbitrage, convertible arbitrage and risk arbitrage.
After piloting Derivatives.com in a live trading environment, WestLB decided to deploy the system to support the growth of its Proprietary Trading operation while reducing time and resource intensive costs to maintain multiple vendor systems and data management initiatives. Through its scalable architecture, Derivatives.com meets the requirements of WestLB with real time Value at Risk and P&L calculations, credit spread modeling, portfolio stress testing and mark-to-market reporting. The system advances WestLB's ability to assess and execute strategies by providing their traders with access to independently maintained data such as Volatility Surfaces, Term Volatility Curves and Dividend tables. Providing secure and reliable market data coupled with market proven analytics and intra day risk management functionalities, Derivatives.com allows WestLB to make informed trading decisions.
"We selected Imagine because it is an industry leader with market-proven web-based software that can support our current and future growth," said Markus Bolder, Executive Director for WestLB. "With Derivatives.com, I now have 100% of my group's positions housed in one comprehensive application that fully integrates my front and middle office. I am now able to make more informed trading decisions, including which strategies to allocate additional capital risk to, because Derivatives.com calculates Value at Risk across all strategies and traders in real-time."
"We are delighted that WestLB, one of Germany’s premier banking institutions, has selected Imagine as its technology partner of choice to address both its immediate and long term strategic challenges," said Steven Harrison, President of Imagine Software. "This is a milestone win for Imagine as we continue to increase our presence in the Western European region. It highlights our ability to provide a cost efficient, yet highly sophisticated web-based trading and risk management solution to European trading organizations of all size. We are excited to provide WestLB with the outsourced software, services and support that will help its trading unit continue to grow and succeed in the competitive European financial markets.”
Imagine continues to be the only derivatives trading and risk management vendor that offers a full-service hosted solution, which provides the benefits of software on demand, data and processing services. It ensures immediate global accessibility and rapid time to market at minimal cost.
About the companies:
WestLB AG is a European commercial bank with firm roots in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest federal state. With Group total assets of € 281.9 billion as at June 30, 2004, it is one of Germany’s leading financial services providers. It is the central institution for the savings banks in North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg, and as an internationally operating commercial bank it acts as their link to the global financial markets. Working in close partnership with the savings banks, WestLB offers the full range of products and services of a universal bank, focusing on lending, structured finance, capital market and private equity products, asset management, transaction services and real estate finance. WestLB Group employs 7,280 staff (as of June 30, 2004).
Imagine Software is the leading provider of full-service hosted investment management solutions for the global financial industry. Its Imagine Trading System, available as an enterprise application and a hosted service at Derivatives.com, is a real-time derivatives trading, portfolio and risk management system that handles all asset types and multiple trading strategies. Developed specifically for institutional investing companies of all sizes, Derivatives.com is the only hosted service that provides software on demand, corporate actions and holdings management, a complete security master, and access to independently maintained pricing inputs. Imagine serves thousands of users worldwide, delivers Reuters real-time data and provides RSA Security user-authentication.
