Tags: accounting, Calyon, Credit Agricole, Endur, Hong Kong, HOUSTON, London, New York, Open Link Financial, OpenLink, operations management, Penrose Financial, position keeping, risk management, trade capture

Open Link Financial, Inc. (“Open Link”) (www.olf.com), a leading provider of cross-asset trading, risk management, operational and portfolio management software, announced today that Calyon, the corporate and investment banking arm of Crédit Agricole (CIB), has completed the deployment of OpenLink’s Endur system across its oil, US natural gas, base metals, European power, gas emissions and structured products within its commodity derivatives groups in London, New York, Houston and Hong Kong.

The deployment of Endur involved a revamping of Calyon’s trading and operations infrastructure (trade capture, risk management, position keeping, operations management and accounting). It resulted in the replacement of many legacy systems within Calyon’s commodity derivatives group by OpenLink.

The initial phase of the implementation focused on the back-office operations areas for energy and base metals, taking advantage of the flexibility of OpenLink’s settlements desktop, accounting module and straight-through-processing capabilities. The decision to deploy OpenLink was driven by Calyon’s need to have a platform that could support their planned ongoing expansion into commodities while at the same time consolidate their back-office processes for their oil and metals activity onto a platform that could manage the planned increases in volumes in those businesses. OpenLink was able to provide the rigorous front and middle-office extensible deal capture and risk management capabilities that Calyon required.

The deployment then addressed OpenLink’s ability to deliver the scalability Calyon requires to manage physical scheduling, support new commodities and provide more complete front-through-back office capabilities than previously possible with Calyon’s incumbent systems. By being able to broaden the front-office functionality to include the ability to trade oil, gas, power, metals and structured products, and integrate Calyon’s proprietary valuation models, they are able to benefit from the integration of financial trading and physical scheduling capability.

“We selected OpenLink because we judged it the most flexible solution to allow us to expand our business, in terms of number of positions, regions, transactions, and product catalog,” said Romain Jérome, Global head of Commodities Technology at Calyon.

Kevin Hesselbirg, CEO of OpenLink remarked, “The Calyon deployment is an affirmation of the breadth, scope, flexibility and functionality available in our energy markets products and validates our vision of providing a single baseline solution for all traded assets classes. Calyon will not only benefit from a lower cost of ownership as a result of the displacement of multiple disparate systems, but also benefit from the increased control environment associated with being in a position to monitor its positions and exposures in a holistic view. Asset classes are increasingly converging and the ability to view your entire market position and associated risk across those markets will continue to differentiate the successful organizations in today’s volatile markets.”

About Calyon

Calyon Crédit Agricole CIB is Crédit Agricole’s corporate and investment banking entity. With a staff of 14,000 employees in 58 countries, Calyon is active in a broad range of capital markets, investment banking and financing activities. Its activities are grouped into two major divisions - Capital Markets & Investment Banking and the Financing Division. Capital Markets covers all aspects of the trading and sales of both standard and structured capital markets products. It is organised into two business lines; Fixed Income Markets comprised of 6 product lines, Interest Rate Derivatives & Hybrids, Foreign Exchange, Commodities, Debt & Credit Markets (Bond origination, securitisation & alternative risk transfer), Structured Credit Markets and Treasury, and Equity Brokerage & Derivatives.

About OpenLink

Founded in 1992, OpenLink is a leading developer of cross-asset trading, risk management, and related operational and portfolio management software. OpenLink’s diverse client base of over 130 customers, worldwide includes 10 of the top 25 largest energy companies by market capitalization, eight of the largest financial institutions and seven of the largest central banks, as well as major hedge funds and public utilities. Headquartered on Long Island, New York, and with offices in New York, Houston, London, Berlin, Vienna, Sao Paulo, and Sydney, OpenLink has more than 620 employees worldwide.

Contacts

Open Link Financial, Inc.
Stephen Amador, +1 516 394 1274
Director of Marketing
samador {at} olf(.)com
or
Penrose Financial
Kay Larsen, +44 (0) 207 786 4858
kayl {at} penrose.co(.)uk