Chris Kentouris

Morgan Stanley, one of the largest sponsors of managed accounts in the United States, has outsourced its middle- and back-office services for its managed account platform Alphas.

Wall Street wire houses — or bulge-bracket firms — continued to top the list of sponsors of separately managed accounts in the second quarter, according to research by the Money Management Institute and Dover Financial Research.

Compliance and financial reporting experts are criticizing the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's proposal for broker-dealers to cough up more detailed and frequent financial reports.

The first blow in the fight against failures remains automating and speeding up otherwise paper-based communications between fund managers and their broker-dealers and custodian banks.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is in discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to establish the first training, licensing and continuing education program for operations executives at financial firms.

Investment managers rely on an array of electronic tools to execute the most complex program trading and algorithmic trading strategies. And brokerage firms and banks can pretty much communicate with their institutional clients electronically in a matter of minutes if not seconds or even microseconds.