Charles River Previews Future Vision with State Street to Clients

Charles River Development (Charles River), a State Street Company and provider of the Charles River Investment Management Solution (Charles River IMS), held its 2018 EMEA Client Conference this week in London. More than 170 attendees representing over 40 firms from 14 countries participated in the event, the first Charles River Client Conference since its acquisition by State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) was completed on October 1, 2018.

Charles River’s newly appointed chief executive officer, John Plansky, addressed attendees and outlined the strategic rationale for the acquisition and his vision for the future. Plansky previewed plans to combine Charles River’s front and middle office Software as a Service (SaaS) capabilities with State Street’s complementary services to deliver a comprehensive, interoperable front-to-back Buy-Side platform.

“State Street and Charles River Development always shared a common focus on helping our clients grow, respond and adapt to industry trends,” said Plansky. “Together, we are creating the industry’s first-ever global interoperable platform from a single service provider that connects the front, middle and back office – something our clients have been asking for. We are excited at the opportunity this presents to help our clients manage their business, investments and data more effectively and efficiently. We are committed to working closely with Charles River’s clients and increasing our investments to strategically enhance capabilities across the front office, middle office, data management and integration of liquidity providers, insights and the back office.”

The client conference covered a wide range of topics for business line executives, fixed income and equity portfolio managers and traders, compliance and risk personnel, operations, and technology managers. In more than 20 presentations and networking sessions, Charles River managers, clients and industry partners discussed current trends impacting buy-side firms in EMEA and globally, as well as Charles River’s product road map.

“The conference gives us critical insight into the challenges clients are facing as they launch more innovative revenue generation options, including digital channels, to optimize the fast-moving cross-asset trading environment whilst responding to ongoing margin pressure and keeping up with ongoing regulatory change,” said Gavin Lavelle, managing director, EMEA, Charles River. “We are focused on providing our customers the necessary services to generate growth whilst optimizing and simplifying middle and back-office processes. Our cloud-based enterprise solution and data services further reduce cost and maximise results for their business users. Combining with State Street provides a unique and comprehensive solution to our clients’ current and future needs.”