TECHNOLOGY

Commerzbank Financial Products, the derivatives trading subsidiary of Germany's Commerzbank, has gone live with version 2.4 of Summit Systems' integrated front-to-back office interest-rate derivatives applications at its Frankfurt and Paris trading centres.

Summit forms one aspect of a part-bought, part-built derivatives systems infrastructure at Commerz FP, say officials. This platform also comprises Paris-based Murex's Currency+ and MX Equity applications, Applix's real-time Unix spreadsheet, and Wilco International's Gloss multi-currency securities clearance and settlement system.

The derivatives company is considering expanding overseas in the Americas and Asia.

In September, a two-person trading team was sent to New York to manage its currency options order flow during the local trading day. By year-end 1996, the company expects to have 300 staff.

For foreign exchange and equity derivatives support, Commerz FP relies on Paris-based Murex's Currency+ and MXEquity derivatives and risk management applications. These applications use a flat-file database for data storage.

This will change early next year, however, when Murex plans to release a Sybase-compatible version of its application suite, according to Murex North America president Maroun Eddé.

In addition to Currency+ and MXEquity, Murex offers MXRates for interest-rate derivatives, Simul+ for bond derivatives and MXCom for commodity derivatives support.

Within the currency options markets, Commerz FP has concentrated on trading plain-vanilla and exotic OTC and exchange-traded options on the European currencies against the dollar and EMS cross-rate options trading, according to currency options trader Patrice Cohen.

"We also do some mark/yen and some sterling/yen, but this isn't a strength of ours as yet," Cohen agrees.

The majority of Commerz FP's interbank currency options trading is in short-term vanilla puts and calls, although the company also trades an increasing number of exotic and structured currency options, including barrier and average-rate options.

The Philadelphia Stock Exchange announced that it now disseminates foreign currency exchange spot values for each of its standardised currency options. The spot values are calculated from actual spot quotes supplied by Reuters and will be updated every ten minutes during Phlx trading hours and will be distributed with options prices as the underlying value. Spot prices (which can be accessed using the appropriate underlying currency option symbol over vendor quote systems), are available for all Phlx physically-settled currency options as well as all cash-settled 3-D Deutsche mark options.