Findur is OpenLink’s fully integrated financial markets solution, offering a straight-through-processing (STP) environment that supports the entire transaction management life cycle, covering a comprehensive list of instruments. TUI needed a single, integrated Treasury / Commodity management system to manage, control, analyse and report their financial exposures and positions. TUI was able to go to into production within eight months – from the design phase, beginning in September 2008, and finishing in mid-April 2009.

TUI has operations in a large number of countries and operates more than 150 aircraft. Given that the volatility of foreign exchange (FX) rates and fuel prices has greatly increased in the past two years, the need to effectively manage these risks, coupled with a stronger focus on cash management is crucial. It was of critical importance that the solution use a single database, with multi-site access interfaces to banks and Reuters (FX and bond data), to provide the functionality needed to deliver hedge accounting and advanced market risk assessment capabilities as well as user-friendly reporting.

OpenLink’s CEO Kevin Hesselbirg commented, “We are very pleased that OpenLink was the vendor of choice, providing TUI with the Findur solution. With its leading Treasury and Commodity management capabilities, it was the “best of breed” application that TUI had been seeking and was the alternative to the existing disparate legacy systems that were not integrated, and did not provide TUI with the requisite tools required to properly manage their financial and operational risks.”

About TUI Travel PLC

TUI Travel PLC is a leading international leisure travel group which operates in approximately 180 countries worldwide and serves more than 30 million customers in over 25 source markets. Headquartered in Crawley, near Gatwick airport in the UK, the Group employs approximately 50,000 people and operates a pan-European airline consisting of over 150 aircraft. The company mainly serves the leisure travel customer and is organised and managed through four business Sectors: Mainstream, Specialist & Emerging Markets, Activity and Accommodation & Destinations. In the financial year ended 30 September 2008, TUI Travel had revenues of £13.9bn and an underlying profit before tax of £320m.

“We wanted to have a fully automated trade processing capability for all of our current asset classes, including foreign exchange, money markets, fixed income, loans and deposits and their associated derivatives. It was also important that the solution be flexible enough to handle potential businesses, such as complex structured products, credit derivatives, energy and commodities,” said Antoine Srieh, Managing Director at EAB.

“Running three different systems – one for trading, one for risk, and one for processing – may not be a sensible approach,” remarked Ken Knowles, Executive VP of Financial and Risk Solutions at OpenLink. “Reconciling information between different systems is not only costly and time consuming – it’s completely unnecessary when you can have an integrated solution.”

“With Findur, we have been able to replace a number of legacy systems with one streamlined application used by over forty users in our front, middle and back offices. In one platform, we have the ability to manage market, credit, and operational risk as well as regulatory and head office reporting while being fully integrated into automated trading and settlement systems. This is a sophisticated solution with wide asset class coverage and a depth of functionality that provides a quantifiable return on investment, while lowering our overall cost of ownership,” added Mr. Srieh.

Jean-Claude Riss, Managing Director, OpenLink International, Ltd. added, “Lowering cost of ownership is one of our primary software design considerations. Firms can achieve huge operational benefits and cost savings when the software facilitates the organization’s desired workflows, rather than forcing the client to adapt to the software.”

The initial project used OpenLink’s Model Bank, a preconfigured database reflecting a bank’s core business, which affords rapid implementation. This resulted in a simultaneous configuration of the entire bank’s treasury and capital markets products, as well as providing enterprise risk management, front-to-back office workflow processing, sub-ledger accounting, regulatory reporting and automated integration of both the Reuters and Hotspot FXi foreign exchange trading platforms. It also allowed confirmation and payments via SWIFT.

Kevin Hesselbirg, CEO at OpenLink, stated that “We are very pleased that Europe Arab Bank selected OpenLink and that they are realizing measurable results. The Findur application can provide companies seeking a complete front, middle and back office system with a single framework, and a solution that is dynamic, scalable and adaptable with extensibility for any organization looking to manage their business in today’s times.”

About Europe Arab Bank

Europe Arab Bank plc (EAB) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Arab Bank. It opened its doors for business in August 2006 and has a capitalization of some €700M. EAB’s headquarters are in London, England and the Bank currently has branches in Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan, Vienna, Rome, Paris and Cannes. Clients of EAB plc have access to a comprehensive set of Treasury, Private, Corporate and Institutional Banking products and services, providing a niche service to a growing number of European companies and individuals wishing to transact with the MENA region.

Arab Bank Group is ranked amongst the largest international financial institutions in the Middle East, with assets of $38.3B. The Group now has a global network of 400 branches and subsidiaries in 29 countries, spanning 5 continents and enjoys a prominent position in key markets and financial centers in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the United States.

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.