Charles River Development, a State Street Company, is collaborating with DirectBooks to support investment firms to manage primary issuance workflows in the Charles River Investment Solution (IMS).
DirectBooks is a sell-side consortium, whose platform facilitates the issuance of fixed income securities by streamlining communications workflows between underwriters and institutional investors. Currently, 25 underwriters and over 250 institutional investors, including 17 of the top 20 global asset managers by AUM, are reportedly live on the platform.
Charles River IMS is a front office system for investment managers and asset owners, including portfolio and risk analytics, order and execution management, trade lifecycle compliance and an investment book of record (IBOR).
Recently, Lord Abbett & Company, a mutual client of Charles River and DirectBooks, adopted the combined offering to manage primary issuance across its institutional and private client portfolios.
“As a leading global fixed income manager, our teams require the latest and most accurate new issuance information,” said Nickolas Prala, trader, fixed income investments at Lord Abbett. “The combination of Charles River’s IMS capabilities and DirectBooks’ comprehensive structured data will allow us to best serve our clients by making the most prudent and efficient investment decisions.”
“DirectBooks is on a mission to improve efficiency in the primary markets for all counterparties. Our choice to connect with Charles River is an obvious one given their presence in the market,” said Rich Kerschner, chief executive officer of DirectBooks. “Our shared clients will benefit immediately from our initial stage of connectivity offering deal announcement data. We believe the DirectBooks offering made available through Charles River will only grow as we extend our features, functionality, and products in the global fixed income markets.”
“We are excited to collaborate with DirectBooks, providing our clients with digitized primary issuance workflows across US and EMEA corporate bond markets, to help improve transparency, and consistent data to support timelier investment decisions,” said Vidya Guruju, senior product manager at Charles River. “The breadth of underwriters and buy-side firms on the DirectBooks platform underscores the value they provide in transforming the traditionally cumbersome primary issuance process.”
