Hatstand Joins the Open MiFID Alliance

LONDON, January 31 /PRNewswire/ --     Hatstand, the leading electronic trading consultancy, announced today
that it has joined forces with the Open MiFID Alliance (OMA), a pan- European
alliance created to tackle the challenges presented by the new MiFID
regulatory environment. The alliance enables financial institutions to adopt
pragmatic solutions to upgrade their IT infrastructure and meet the
regulatory requirements of the directive. Led by Avitis and Sun Microsystems
(NASDAQ: JAVA) the OMA partners include Cinnober, Mobius Management Systems
(an ASG Company), edge IPK, SAS, ULLINK, and Gissing Software. Ian Mouat,
Head of the MiFID practice at Hatstand, said "We are delighted to become part
of this very valuable consortium for the financial markets industry. We
believe that by working together, we will be able to bring strong synergies
and more integrated solutions to our clients and, in addition, provide
support to clients of other OMA members seeking solutions in the post-MiFID
market."

About Hatstand

Hatstand provides specialist niche consultancy services within the
electronic trading systems arena including: selection, design, development,
project management, business analysis, implementation and support. Hatstand
also provide specialist business analysis and development skills for high
performance & highly available direct exchange links, order routing and order
management. Hatstand has more recently focused on Smart Order Routing,
multi-venue connectivity and algorithmic trading applications to address a
more fragmented post-MiFID market environment. Hatstand's clients range from
tier one global investment banks though to small brokers based in Europe,
Hong Kong and the New York. Services range from fully managed services and
project teams through to satisfying specific skill gaps for existing teams.
Established in 1999, Hatstand Limited is a privately held firm with the head
office based in London. For more information on Hatstand services, clients
and case studies, please visit our website: http://www.hatstand-ltd.com.

About OMA

The OMA enables financial institutions to adopt pragmatic solutions to
accelerate the upgrade of their IT infrastructure, and meet the regulatory
requirements of MiFID. OMA solutions are modular, integrated, highly
adaptable, fast to deploy, and well-suited to institutions wishing to respond
rapidly to competitive threats in the new MiFID world. Led by Sun
Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) and AVITIS, the current OMA members are Mobius
Management Systems, Inc. (an ASG Company); edge IPK; ULLINK; Gissing
Software; SAS; Cinnober Financial Technology AB; and now Hatstand. The OMA
provides a flexible, sustainable framework that enables firms to address the
following key challenges immediately and with reduced deployment times and
risk:

- Infrastructure (Sun Microsystems),

- Systems integration (AVITIS),

- Record keeping (Mobius Management Systems),

- Client classification (edgeIPK),

- Best execution (ULLINK),

- Pre- and post-trade transparency (Gissing Software),

- Transaction reporting and execution analysis (SAS), and

- Systematic internalisation (Cinnober).

These solutions are designed to handle the new regulatory requirements
and are agile enough to respond to the new, pan-European, competitive
marketplace. Collectively, OMA members maintain reference clients at more
than 300 financial institutions worldwide. Counted among these references
are: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman
Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, Credit Suisse, UBS, BNP
Paribas, Societe Generale, Credit Agricole, Natixis, BBVA, Grupo Santander,
ABN Amro, ING, Barclays, The Royal Bank of Scotland, UniCredit, Deutsche
Bank, Commerzbank, and Fortis Bank.

For further information about OMA, or to contact one of its members,
please email oma@sun.com.

Jo Moore 
    Hatstand Ltd 
    123 Minories 
    +44(0)207-423-5677
    jo.moore@hatstand-ltd.com