Charles River Development (Charles River), a front- and middle-office investment management solutions provider, today announced that Montanaro Asset Management (Montanaro), a leading independent asset manager in London, has implemented the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) as a single, consolidated platform across its equity operations. Montanaro users will benefit from automated portfolio management, trading and order management, compliance and integrated electronic trading via FIX (Financial Information eXchange) through the Charles River Network. Montanaro is utilising Charles River´s Managed Services offering of Application Management and Hosting for the Charles River IMS, designed to help reduce costs and increase ROI by supplying system expertise and hosted infrastructure.
"We are recognised for our expertise in investing in pan-European quoted SmallCap rather than in handling day-to-day system and technology challenges," said Charles Montanaro, CEO and founder of Montanaro. "Our decision to work with Charles River is a testimony to the professionalism we have established in all areas of our firm. As an independent boutique, we strive to ensure excellence in returns and service for our clients. Charles River will help us to continue to grow while maintaining the highest standards of performance at all times. We are delighted that Charles River will now manage and host our portfolio management, trading and compliance systems. We have come to know Charles River well during the implementation process and are looking forward to working closely with them in the future."
Charles River´s Managed Services helps clients mitigate operational risk by providing off-hour support, management of application integration, disaster recovery planning and system expertise. Charles River also offers a managed Data Service that provides clients with mapped, fed and monitored security and reference data. Hosting of Charles River IMS is supported by four highly-secure, SAS70 Type 1- and II-certified data hosting centers in the US and UK, owned and managed by Rackspace. Charles River´s standard hosting model provides each client with a dedicated instance of Charles River IMS on a shared virtualized hosting infrastructure, with 24x7x365 global system expertise and support.
"Charles River´s Managed Services provides clients like Montanaro with a level of efficiency often associated with much larger companies, allowing them to focus internal resources on key business activities," said Tom Driscoll, managing director, Global, Charles River Development. "More than 50 buy-side firms worldwide currently use our Managed Services as a fully-outsourced application management and hosting solution."
About Montanaro Asset Management Limited
Montanaro was established in 1991. It has the largest and one of the most experienced specialist teams in the UK dedicated exclusively to researching and investing in quoted European smaller companies. The team is multi-lingual and multi-national, ensuring that Montanaro has the benefit of local contacts and knowledge that is so essential to detailed and thorough research. Montanaro´s clients are mainly leading international financial institutions (insurance companies, pension funds, local authorities and fund of fund managers).
Montanaro acted as advisers to the Mars Pension Fund (1993-95) and GE Capital (1996-97) and launched its first fund, a limited partnership, in 1993. It has since launched several new funds, including the Montanaro UK Smaller Companies Investment Trust (1995), the Montanaro European Smaller Companies Fund (2000) and the Montanaro European Equity Income Fund (2007).
In September 2006, Montanaro were appointed Manager of the Montanaro European Smaller Companies Trust, its second UK listed investment trust specialising in Continental European SmallCap. In addition, Montanaro manages six segregated European mandates, including for the Church of England, the University of London, the Medical Research Council and France´s Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites ("FRR").
At 31 December 2011, funds under management were €1.3 billion.
About Charles River Development
Charles River Development provides software, hosting and data services to automate front and middle office investment operations for buy-side firms. On-premises software and SaaS solutions support portfolio management, compliance and risk monitoring, access to global liquidity, and trade processing. The company has more than 300 clients in 41 countries in the institutional asset and fund management, alternative investments, wealth management, insurance, banking, pension and custody markets.