Cable & Wireless Plc and MAI Plc, the former Mills & Allen International, are jointly working on a currency trading system which is expected to rival Reuters Holdings Plc’s forthcoming international system for automatically matching bids and offers. The name of the company and the system is Radar Financial, but that is about as much as Cables is prepared to say about the operation. When it is likely to be launched and what hardware and software will be used is not being disclosed. Cables has admitted that linking the system with Reuters is a sensible comparison, because the two will be in the same market. But at the same time, it denies that the two will be rivals, because that implies that one is better than the other and that people will be making a choice between the two, none of which are givens. So far the system has taken three years to develop. The Reuters system has been some time in coming to market because of the complex nature of host computer software which has to match bids and offers, and last minute commercial considerations – one of which is the thorny question of liability – if the system goes down and trades are lost. Reuters, which developed the software in-house and bought in terminals from a variety of unamed companies, is currently beta testing with some 30 banks in London and New York.
