在持续追求Alpha中，对冲基金正在使用技术来提高一个不太可能的中式运营中的表现。
在罗伯特Herin麦迪逊海滨大道办公室，首席技术官和基于纽约的德雷克管理的风险管理领导的大型壁挂式平板电脑监视器上闪烁着红色的“10,000美元”。闪烁的号码标志在公司的投资组合中的贸易，表明德雷克认为，德雷克相信过度衍生的价值和归因于其交易对手的价值之间的10,000美元。
在对冲基金世界中，这种不一致性并不少见，这往往依赖于涉及不透明和非异常证券的复杂的投资策略，其中错过的主要支付或售价为5％的销售价格可以轻松消除。捕获这种违规行为 - 并捕获可能对他们丢失的资金 - 德雷克，在三个多国际固定收入对冲基金中管理的大约37亿美元的资产，已经花费了数百万美元和数千小时创造了技术平台处理处理任务
这通常落在交易的启动和他们的定居点之间，通常称为中间办公室行动。
“中间办公室是一项任务，你必须监督自己，”Cygnet的建筑师，41，Cygnet，一套专有的交易，合规性和风险管理软件应用程序说，由Drake开发。“谁有你的支票簿的股份最多？你或你的会计师？“
协调对冲基金的账户与他们的交易对手和监护人的账户并不性感，但节省成千上万美元的潜力已经定制了中共职能的内部管理，吸引了寻求促进回报的管理员。虽然取决于资金投资策略的复杂性，但其最简单形式的中式管理是关于控制风险和信息技术资源的复杂性，但取决于对冲基金的变化。中办事处职能包括发布指令以将资金转移到定价为处理投标优惠的指令。
Handling middle-office functions in-house is not new. Needham, Massachusetts–based research and consulting firm TowerGroup estimates that only about 10 percent of hedge funds outsource their middle office. Most have been content to manage theirs with rudimentary systems that often combine off-the-shelf products, like San Francisco–based Advent Software’s Geneva investment accounting system.
但由于对冲基金经理转向更精致的策略来产生更高的回报，越来越多的公司已经开始耕作数百万美元进入创建专有技术。节省成本是大多数对冲基金的司机。一些，如纽约的Bluemountain资本管理，相信定制系统可以生成alpha。
For Drake, middle office has been a cornerstone of its business plan since its founders, Anthony Faillace and Steven Luttrell, left New York–based fixed-income behemoth BlackRock in 2001 to create a firm that would combine hedge funds with long-only mutual funds and traditional managed accounts. The pair called upon the expertise of former colleagues like Herin, who worked with them at BlackRock and before that at Newport Beach, California–based Pacific Investment Management Co., to help create the middle-office technology they knew would be instrumental in their success.
德雷克战略的一部分涉及投资过渡市场，如波兰和南非，其中估值和跟踪不足证券可能是极其困难的。即使是普通的vanilla利率掉期可能是一个挑战。虽然德雷克的中间办公室可能不会在达成协议后的几天内收到交换合约，但负责确保文件是正确的，验证了特殊交易条款，保证金支付准确。
中间办事处对管理抵押品也至关重要。对于利率互换，同行权持有抵押品，具体取决于合同条款。随着互换的价值与基本利率的动作波动，中间办公室向上或向下调整抵押品。
“We’re a levered fund; we have to know exactly where we stand at all times,” says Herin, who led a team of 12 software programmers and risk management professionals to develop Cygnet. They needed to ensure that the system would not only be able to integrate large amounts of data across Drake’s portfolios but also concurrently measure the real-time risk and compliance of the firm’s hedge funds, mutual funds and individual accounts.
“我们不想感到惊讶，”Herin解释说，德雷克的内部投资组合监测已经通过减少公司保证金账户的规模来提高绩效和盈利能力。Cygnet的现金管理功能为基金管理人员提供每日交易和交易的日常状态报告上午7:30。外部中间办公服务提供商往往无法提供该信息直到第二天。
像Drake一样，Bluemountain认为，内部化的中间办公室通过允许坚定更有效地使用资本，帮助产生更高的回报。“它为我们创造了阿尔法，”布鲁梅勒工业官员塞缪尔科尔说，布鲁蒙特的首席运营官，其中大约有3亿美元的信贷相关的对冲基金战略。他估计，由于其OTC衍生品交易的复杂性，他的公司每年花费大约700万美元的运营和技术开发。Bluemountain是信用默认交换的大用户。
In the OTC world, dealers execute trades, collateralize and margin them, send cash payments and generate confirmations on their own. Stephen Siderow, president of BlueMountain, says his firm couldn’t trade with all of its current 28 counterparties if it hadn’t made a major investment in its own middle office. Known within the firm as IMS, short for Investment Management Analysis and Support, the hybrid platform handles capital management, risk and P&L reporting, risk and capital analysis, and operations.
使用IMS，Bluemountain的运营团队在执行时验证交易，监控公司及其经销商之间的现金流量，并确认所有OTC衍生品交易。此外，本集团管理公司及其主要经纪人之间的日常信息流，并负责审查，简化和自动化其流程以降低成本并减少前提执行风险。Bluemountain正在不断增强其技术平台。
“如果另一个对冲基金提出了同样的交易思想，但没有相同的中间能力，它可能会过高，并且对其工作减少，”Coo Cole说。
BlueMountain integrates products and services from outside providers into IMS. It uses White Plains, New York–based financial technology firm Communicator’s compliance hub for trade confirmations and New York–based Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s Deriv/SERV trade-matching service and Markit Group for valuations. Daily, weekly and monthly P&L and net asset values are generated by Advent Software’s Geneva platform, which is run by Advent’s administrator, GlobeOp Financial Services. By the end of 2007, BlueMountain expects to bring P&L generation in-house and will use New York–based GlobeOp to double-check the numbers on a monthly basis.
复杂的交易策略是Agamas Capital Management的决定建立自己的中间系统的司机。基于纽约的多际策略基金，专门从事资产少于5亿美元的相对价值交易，它开始在2005年4月推出之前近一年的系统构建该系统。
“运行一个良好的中间办公室运营产生了降低了基金的底线的切实结果，”乔治·罗克（George Roeck）乔治·罗克，48号，首席财务官和吉玛首席合规官。Roeck负责监督公司的经营业务，并依赖于技术始终持续其负债和资产。该系统处理从贸易进入到确认和结算的所有内容，包括保证金，现金管理和文件管理。
“It is an integral part of our investment and risk management processes,” says Roeck, whose previous positions include a stint with Bank of New York, where, as the firm’s director of administration and tax services, he oversaw financial reporting, compliance and tax services for roughly $250 billion in assets. Additionally, he served as CFO for both Florham Park, New Jersey–based institutional investment manager GSC Partners and Greenwich, Connecticut–based mergers and acquisitions firm Greenbridge Group, where he was responsible for monitoring any investment gains or losses in early-stage companies and reporting results to investors.
虽然Agamas在内部开发了自己的中间和后台系统，但该公司使用Visual Portfolio Manager，Melville，纽约综合业务系统的会计包，计算P＆LS并产生内部财务报告。“有与我们的管理员并行的书籍和记录提供了我们的日常和解过程更高的准确性，并作为对我们向我们报告的内容进行交叉检查，”罗克说。他补充说，追求更加复杂的投资策略的公司是有道理的 - 特别是长短股票 - 外包他们的中间办公室。在主要的股票市场，他解释说，证券的定价和估值是一个问题的少得多，因为有更透明度，第三方系统能够更容易地管理这些信息。
Still, most long-short hedge fund firms see value in keeping middle-office management in-house. Joseph O’Neill, the chief financial officer for Otter Creek, a $120 million value-oriented long-short manager in Palm Beach, Florida, says the real-time information his firm’s in-house middle office generates allows its managers to make more efficient moves in the market. O’Neill is so certain internalizing Otter Creek’s middle office will pay off that his incentive compensation is partially tied to how much the system he oversees improves performance.
当然,并不是所有的公司都能够customizing their middle office — or have an interest in doing so. Third-party service providers like Dublin-based PFPC International are betting that hedge fund firms that have previously managed to get by with off-the-shelf products will be more willing to outsource to them if they can cater to managers’ increasingly complex investment strategies. PFPC is enhancing its platform to better handle OTC derivatives, including linking to London-based SwapsWire to automate the confirmation process.
Citigroup公司和投资银行最近推出了一项服务，提供对冲基金是一家集成的前台，中间和后台平台。J.P.摩根全球证券服务今年早些时候收购了Paloma Partners Management Co.的后台运营，一直在扩大其服务。J.P. Morgan和花旗集团都投注更多的对冲基金将最终选择外包中议院，以将其能源和资源集中在投资上。
但对于具有复杂战略的对冲基金，这些策略在严重定制他们的中间系统方面，外包不太可能是一项考虑。回到Drake的麦迪逊大道总部，Herin指出了他的监视器和Cygnet的颜色编码标记系统，荣幸地将其描述为“鸟瞰图”。在这个特殊的一天几乎所有的位置都是黄色的，表明它们在他们应该的地方的0.5％范围内 - 而且Cygnet正在进行这项工作。