Colt ‘Unifies' Colt, MarketPrizm Capital Markets Teams

Jay Hibbin, vice president of capital markets services at MarketPrizm, says the team was created in response to increasing client demand for a combined set of products from Colt─particularly around managed IT hosting of large platforms─and MarketPrizm, whose solutions allow customers to access multiple pools of liquidity and provide them with managed services over its network platform.

"Colt has a long history in capital markets serving financial clients, all the way back to its origins," Hibbin says. "It's always been a strong sector for Colt, and we decided to bring that together with the MarketPrizm expertise, assets and knowledge in the market to create a single sales function-dedicated team for capital markets that serves all the financial services customers we have across Europe."

Hibbin says that since acquiring full control of MarketPrizm in 2013─after initially being a majority investor alongside Nomura─Colt has been looking at how to leverage the company's assets, knowledge and expertise globally.

"We're creating something very compelling for our customers," says Hugh Cumberland, financial services solutions manager at Colt, explaining that the new team was designed to serve clients through the complete lifecycle of their activities in capital markets, across firms' front, middle and back offices.

In addition, Colt will offer a single, end-to-end service-level agreement covering projects that combine MarketPrizm's front-office infrastructure solutions with Colt's datacenter and voice network services, which the vendor hopes will simplify delivery of IT services to clients.

The move comes after MarketPrizm announced in May the creation of a channel model in Asia that enables traders to contract managed solutions covering market data, co-location, direct market access, risk management, datacenter and cloud services through partners including KVH, Fusion Systems and Object Trading.

In that case too, Hibbin says, the goal was to leverage a wider salesforce and market knowledge, adding the company will probably look at whether it can replicate this approach elsewhere across its business.

Hibbin says the new European team, which is composed of about 100 existing staff from Colt and MarketPrizm, includes sales staff that focus on customer relationships, design of services and solutions, and marketing, and a capital markets team that looks at all aspects of the operational delivery of its network.

Hibbin is responsible for developing and delivering both existing and new services, while Naz Dossa, vice president of capital markets, will manage the sales and service management team.

Colt will have a capital markets presence in all major financial hubs in Europe, including Frankfurt, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, London and Amsterdam.