Velocimetrics, a provider of real-time business performance monitoring and analysis solutions to the global financial community, recently announced its technology partnership with Solace Systems, the leading provider of hardware-based messaging middleware. This partnership demonstrates Velocimetrics’ ongoing commitment to ensuring that TipOff® continues to excel in enabling users to independently monitor and analyse their middleware messaging activities, which form the very fabric on which the industry’s trading systems are built.

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Police analysts forecast the time they spend on cybercrime will treble over the next three years but only 30% believe they have the skills and tools to tackle cybercrime effectively, according to a survey from PA Consulting Group.

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With the launch of euro zone quantitative easing on January 22, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi hopes to have delivered on his pledge to do “whatever it takes” to safeguard the region’s prospects. It was not quite a design classic but it was a feat of engineering nevertheless. The quantitative easing programme unveiled by ECB President Mario Draghi on last Thursday was – save for a few missing components – a pretty impressive machine. Continue reading…

The Swiss National Bank recently scrapped its CHF/EUR currency peg in an unexpected move that roiled financial markets. Here, we explain what may have been behind the move and its implications. What did the Swiss National Bank do and what was the reaction in the financial markets ? The SNB abandoned the CHF’s exchange rate peg against the EUR, which had been set at EUR1.20 since September 2011. The CHF rallied sharply in response to the move, gaining as much as 40 per cent against the EUR at one point, and hitting its highest level against the USD in three years. Such volatility is extremely rare in G-10 currencies. Continue reading…

Today, the ECB announced the so-called asset purchase programme. Mario Drgahi, President of ECB: “ Based on our regular economic and monetary analyses, we conducted a thorough reassessment of the outlook for price developments and of the monetary stimulus achieved. As a result, the Governing Council took the following decisions:
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Delta Lloyd NV recently announced the sale of its German life business to Athene Holding Ltd. (“Athene”). Athene is a Bermuda-based insurance holding company and, through its subsidiaries, is a leading provider of products in the retirement savings market in the USA. In 2010, Delta Lloyd’s German life business stopped selling new business and has since been in run-off.

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Recently the German newspaper Handelsblatt had an interesting interview with Mario Draghi, President of the ECB about the future of Europe.

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Last December the Council formally appointed the Chair, the Vice-Chair and the four other permanent members of the Single Resolution Board. This concludes a recruitment process which started in July 2014. The methodology for calculating banks’ contributions to the Single Resolution Fund was also been adopted. Continue reading…

The euro entered circulation in Lithuania today, bringing the number of European Union (EU) Member States using the single European currency to 19. “On behalf of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, I welcome this further enlargement of the euro area. Lithuania has taken exceptional measures in difficult times to reach its goal of joining the single currency,” Mario Draghi, President of the ECB, said.

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