The first fruits of NMW Computers Plc’s six month collaboration with IBM and City market maker Win-terflood Securities Ltd were announced yesterday in the shape of a fault-tolerant System/88-based real-time trading system already up and running in Winterflood’s London EC3 offices. For Nantwich, Cheshire-based NMW, the installation marks a diversification away from its previous systems running on ICL mainframes with a clear distinction between front- and back-office, towards on-site integrated systems. Known as Equity, the system uses System/88’s fault-tolerance to provide a reliable instantaneous display of changes in price and position; all remote and user input is displayed and integrated as it occurs, and there is an X25 link to the SEAQ automatic quotation system. Equity has a settlement and accounting system that supports two stage deal input, so that basic details can be entered by the dealer, with settlement details going in later. NMW’s Nigel Banister said the decision to choose the IBM badge on the System/88 hardware, which IBM buys OEM from Stratus, stems from the fact that the majority of market makers are owned by banks, which tend to have an unwritten policy to buy IBM and want to see support from the same people that look after their own systems. Equity can, however, run on other Stratus machines, including the Unix systems, and NMW would be willing to put Equity up under Unix if asked. Brian Winterflood, also known as Mr USM, set up Winterflood Securities in May 1988, and as the first independent equities market maker formed after the Big Bang, it was seen at the time as a welcome return to old style jobbing. Although still involved in the Unlisted Securities Market, Winterflood Securities has now expanded to deal in fully quoted stocks in the beta and gamma sections of the market. The chief attraction of the Equity system for Brian Winterflood, who claims to have been left behind in the technology field by the abacus – take that or leave it – was that it removes the distinction between the two functions of the front- and back-office. The market makers will have paid around UKP600,000 to UKP800,000 for such a system, and fortunately for them, Winterflood acknowledges that it works a treat. It is the first new trading system installation of the New Year, and last night NMW and IBM were busy courting other market makers in the City curious to find out about Equity.
