The Investment Industry for IT Practitioners: An Introductory Guide

This new book, published by John Wiley and Sons in 2008 explains how the securities and investment industry works from an IT perspective.

Marc Earl, Managing Director of Deutsche Bank said about this book:

“The practical and simple explanations provided demystify areas which are often never clearly understood by IT practitioners. The reader will gain a firm grounding in financial products and the key functions required for their processing… a reader who has learnt the content could hold a sensible meeting with virtually any end user in a capital markets organisation.”

To order this book form John Wiley UK follow this link:

http://.preview.tinyurl.com/68txwm
this will take you to the John Wiley UK website


Here is the table of contents:

Introduction
Acknowledgements
PART ONE
1 An Introduction to Financial Instruments
1.1 Introduction
2 Equities
2.1 Listed and unlisted equities
2.2 Multi–listed securities
2.3 The issuance of listed equities – the primary market
2.4 The secondary market in equities
3 Debt Instruments
3.1 Types of debt instruments
3.2 Accrued interest on bonds in the secondary market
3.3 More trade terminology
3.4 How prices are formed in the secondary market
4 Cash
4.1 Cash as a means of exchange
4.2 Cash as an investment class
4.3 More trade terminology
5 Derivatives
5.1 Exchange traded derivative contracts
5.2 More trade terminology
5.3 OTC derivatives
6 Common Attributes of Financial Instruments
6.1 Summary of all trade terminology used in chapters 1 to 5
6.2 Summary of basic trade arithmetic for transactions in securities, futures and options
7 Market Participants
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Investors
7.3 Institutional fund managers
7.4 Private client stockbrokers and investment managers
7.5 Investment banks that accept and execute orders from investors
7.6 Investment exchanges
7.7 Settlement agents
7.8 Other market participants
8 How Investment Firms are Regulated
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Objectives of regulation
8.3 The global perspective
8.4 The European perspective
8.5 The UK perspective – the role of the financial services authority
8.6 Specific offences in the United Kingdom
8.7 Regulation and its impact on the It function
9 Straight–Through–Processing
9.1 Introduction
9.2 To what extent is STP actually achieved in practice?
10 The Role of Accurate Static Data in the STP Process
10.1 Static data overview
10.2 Duplication of static data across systems
10.3 Instrument group static data
10.4 Instrument static data
10.5 Trading party and settlement agent static data
10.6 Standard settlement instructions (SSIs)
10.7 Static data that is internal to the firm concerned
10.8 Normal working days and public holidays
10.9 Country information
11 Communications Between Industry Participants
11.1 SWIFT
11.2 The financial information exchange (Fix Protocol)
11.3 Other message standards
12 The Trade Agreement and Settlement Processes
12.1 The trade agreement process
12.2 Communications between the trade party and its settlement agent
13 Failed Trades – Causes, Consequences and Resolution
13.1 Failed trades – causes
13.2 Consequences of failed trades
13.3 The prevention and resolution of failed trades and the impact on it applications
14 An Overview of Investment Accounting
14.1 Role of the financial control department
14.2 Departmental systems
14.3 The general ledger
15 The Stock Record –Using the double–entry Convention to Control Positions and Security Quantities
16 Example STP Flows of Equity Agency Trades – When Execution Venue the London Stock Exchange
16.1 Introduction
16.2 Equity agency trades with institutional investor customers
16.3 Equity agency trades with private investor customers
16.4 Direct market access
17 The STP Flow of Debt Instrument Trades
17.1 Introduction
17.2 Order placement
17.3 Order execution
17.4 Trade amounts
17.5 Trade agreement
17.6 Regulatory trade reporting
17.7 Settlement
17.8 General ledger postings for the trade and the settlement
17.9 Stock record postings for the trade and the settlement
17.10 Position–related events
18 The STP Flow of Foreign Exchange and Money Market Trades
18.1 Foreign exchange
18.2 Money market
19 The STP Flow of Futures and Options Transactions
19.1 Introduction
19.2 Futures and options – common process steps
19.3 Futures–specific process steps
19.4 Options–specific process steps
20 The STP Flow of SWAP and other OTC Derivative Trades
20.1 Introduction
20.2 Order placement
20.3 Order execution
20.4 Trade components and amounts
20.5 Trade agreement
20.6 Regulatory trade reporting
20.7 Settlement
20.8 General ledger postings
20.9 Stock record postings
20.10 Marking to market
20.11 Daily accrual of interest
21 Stock Lending, Repos and Funding
21.1 Introduction
21.2 Stock Lending and borrowing transactions
21.3 Repo transactions
21.4 Summary of the differences between the various transaction types
21.5 The Role of specialist lending intermediaries (SLIs)
21.6 Business Applications to support stock lending and repos
22 The Impact of Islamic Finance
22.1 Introduction
22.2 Delivering Islamic financial services
22.3 Sharia compliant instruments
22.4 The valuation and risk management of Islamic financing instruments
22.5 The it implications of providing Islamic instruments
23 The Management of Positions
23.1 Introduction
23.2 Trade dated, value dated, settled and depot positions
23.3 Interest payments and interest rate fixings
23.4 Collection of maturity proceeds
23.5 Dividend payments
23.6 Corporate actions
23.7 Listed derivatives – contract expiry and delivery dates
23.8 Marking positions to market
23.9 Accrual of interest
23.10 Other accruals
23.11 Reconciliation
24 The Management of Risk
24.1 Forms of market risk
24.2 Forms of credit risk
24.3 Other forms of risk
24.4 The role of the board of directors in managing risk
24.5 The role of the risk management department
24.6 An introduction to value–at–risk (VAR)
PART TWO
25 The Role of the IT Department in Daily Operations
25.1 Introduction
25.2 User support and helpdesk management
25.3 Data security, data retention, data protection and intellectual property
25.4 Change management
25.5 Business continuity planning
25.6 Use of the it infrastructure library in managing it operations
26 The Role of the IT Department in Managing Business Change
26.1 Introduction
26.2 The software development lifecycle
26.3 Project management standards
26.4 Software development models
26.5 Requirements gathering
26.6 Quality assurance testing
27 Package and Vendor Selection, Outsourcing and Offshoring
27.1 Making the buy or build decision
27.2 Vendor and package selection
27.3 Outsourcing and offshoring
Appendix 1 Bond Market Price Calculations
Straight bond calculations
Simple yield to maturity
Gross redemption yield
FRN calculations
Simple margin
Discounted margin
Valuation methodologies for other types of debt instrument
Appendix 2 Summary of Contractual Documents
Appendix 3 Further Reading
Glossary of Terms
Index