Napier Park Global Capital, with offices in London and New York, is reaching out to MSP Options to help manage the investment firm’s computing infrastructure.
Options is providing two services, Momentum and PIPE Core, which are part of Options’ overall Private Capital Platform.
"Evolving market conditions have significantly raised the level of operational sophistication that fund managers must demonstrate to both investors and regulators," said Michael Williams, chief operating officer at Napier Park Global Capital. "We met with a number of technology firms to outsource this work, and we found that Options was the only one that has the capability to quickly implement a cost-effective, robust and secure technology infrastructure that meets our requirements."
The Napier Park deal isn’t tiny. The investment house manages nearly $7 billion, and manages hedge funds, private investing for institutions, and CLOs.
Meanwhile, PIPE Core is Option’s full technology managed infrastructure service. It includes operations management, support to help businesses meet compliance regulations, and insures that communications are resilient.
PIPE Core supports third-party applications, as well as clients’ proprietary bits of software.
Meanwhile, Momentum is a service aimed at those who have their own IT services in-house, but want to add third-party portfolio management and trading systems.
Momentum is also a good testing ground by letting customers “test new systems, technologies and business opportunities at short notice, and to draw on the considerable technical expertise of Options’ engineers, systems administrators, database administrators, project managers and technical advisors under a simple, well-defined inclusive recurring subscription,” Options said.
Good management tools and services are critical in the new world of high finance. Following the banking crisis that started some six years ago, the investment market has become more competitive and risk averse.
And with consolidation, the remaining firms have more to manage and need to make sure all its operations are fully merged and integrated.
Options believes the tough finance market is ripe for its type of functions and the services approach. “The top line business environment is equally tough, leaving participants in a position where they need next generation systems to compete in an agile and time-sensitive manner, while driving down overall IT costs by an order of magnitude,” the company said. “Since its formation in 1993, Options’ vision has been to deliver world class shared services to the financial services industry. This began with the provision of core technology services to Hedge Funds and has expanded to include a full range of top tier global banks. Tilting the playing field by delivering the next generation of service at a significantly lower cost than either internal IT groups or incumbents has always been our core business.”
Edited by
Braden Becker
