SIS Swiss Financial Services is to cancel its dividend and post a net loss in 2002 after taking a Sfr40 million hit against the recent failure of the Global Straight Through Processing Association (GSTP).
SIS was one of the original axion4 technology consortium that built the Transaction Flow Manager (TFM), the central matching engine developed for the industy-backed GSTP. The TFM and other assets of the bankrupt utility are now in the hands of Swiss administrators, after the venture was forced to fold when shareholders refused to stump up further funding two weeks ago.
SIS and development partners Swift and Technosoft/Tata created a new company, AccuMatch AG, to consolidate their rights to the TFM technology when the original axion4 consortium was relieved of duties by the GSTP ahead of the go-live data in September. SIS owns a 70% stake in AccuMatch.
"Due to GSTP AG's stopping its operations, rights in the matching engine and the developed software are transferred to AccuMatch," says SIS. "AccuMatch has already starting investigating how the software solution could be best used in the future."
Under Swiss bankruptcy law, the assets of GSTP have been transferred to the company's administrators in Zurich. SIS claims to have licensing rights to the technology which will remain in force should the intellectual property rights be sold to a third party.
SIS insists that its other business activities are not affected by the GSTP failure, and that the company will continue with plans to set up a Swiss central counterparty (SIS x-clear AG) for stock exchange trades concluded on the screen-based virt-x exchange.