Grant Capital Partners, a macro hedge fund that trades in liquid products, has gone live with SunGard's Sierra, a real-time trading, risk and position management solution.
Grant selected Sierra to help it manage its cross-asset trading activities. Sierra helps Grant manage its operations across instruments including FX cash, FX options, exchange-traded futures and options, fixed income and interest rates. The solution is delivered by SunGard to Grant on an ASP (application service provider) basis.
Sierra's connectivity capabilities give Grant a straight-through processing (STP) trading solution that helps remove the need for duplicate manual entry. Grant's traders can execute transactions on several different trading platforms, which are then imported and routed to the correct portfolios within Sierra and exported to the appropriate prime brokers and fund administrators. This process is managed in real-time. In addition, Sierra helps Grant view and maintain consolidated positions and P&L information, also in real-time, across its diverse portfolios. Finally, the provision of the solution on an ASP basis means that Grant has been able to keep the total cost of ownership low.
Stephen T. Lisenby, chief operating officer at Grant Capital Partners, said: "SunGard's Sierra has given us exactly what we needed: a real-time position management system that is able to handle multiple interfaces, straight-through processing and instrument types. SunGard's flexible approach to the solution's connectivity also meant that together we were able to build new connections quickly and easily. Of the vendors that say they can support multiple interfaces with different trading platforms, prime brokers and administrators, SunGard has proven that they can actually do it."
Jim Dennelly, senior vice president for the Sierra solution in SunGard's capital markets and investment banking business, commented: "This particular implementation showed just how robust and flexible our solution is. Deploying Sierra on an ASP basis helps Grant concentrate on its core business, executing a macro hedge fund strategy while remaining as close to close to liquid as possible. Sierra will also assist Grant in gaining a real-time view of its positions within the market and in handling its complex interface requirements. Using Sierra will help Grant realize gains in efficiency and transparency."