Word: broker
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...company, started in 2000 by former broker supervisor David Tilken, sells Broker Audit, software that automatically tracks client-account activity and alerts in-house compliance officers to suspicious doings. As Tilken, 48, politely puts it, the idea is to prevent "accidents"--everything from long-term neglect to mistyped trade orders to ill-advised portfolio strategies to outright fraud...
Based in Hingham, Mass., Protegent charges a setup fee and then an ongoing $15 to $20 a month per broker (it can also bill by account). About 25,000 brokers handling more than 12 million accounts are currently tracked, the company says. Nationwide, there are more than 5,000 broker-dealers employing some 675,000 brokers. "Firms are under increasing pressure to be more and more watchful," says Jaime Punishill, an analyst who covers financial-services technologies at Forrester Research. "That's hard with a mostly manual system. If firms can automate cost-effectively, then...
Competition for Protegent will increasingly come from suppliers of order-management software, the kind that handles the actual execution of trades. Publicly traded SunGard Data Systems, for instance, with more than $4.2 billion in annual sales, is adding broker-compliance screening to its products. Tilken says Broker Audit's toughest competition will be in-house software developed by brokerages. That's probably truest of the largest houses, which might find it less expensive to write their own code than to pay a per-broker fee month after month...
Over time, though, it could be the hassle and expense of adapting to ever changing regulations that drives customers to Protegent's door. Even before the federal Patriot Act took effect last April, for example, Broker Audit was ready to handle new anti-money-laundering tracking requirements (like watching out for unusual wire transfers in and out of brokerage accounts). Coming up: tracking of unnecessarily high mutual-fund commissions, based on selling inappropriate types of shares to certain investors--a measure that will be required by the National Association of Securities Dealers later this year. So many opportunities for mischief...
...handsome stranger who arrived with Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Conde Nast International, was greeted warmly by Domenico De Sole, CEO of Gucci Group (owner of the McQueen label), and shown to an envied front-row seat. The fashion plebeians who didn't recognize him or his power-broker companions couldn't miss his three-quarter-length woven leather coat by Bottega Veneta. Who was the guy smiling and schmoozing and wearing a $7,500 coat...