News & Press releases

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Zürich, March 9th, 2021– Fidectus AG, a leading cloud service provider in the OTC trading markets, has appointed Dr. Hans-Bernd Menzel to its Advisory Board with immediate effect. Dr. Menzel was the long-term Chief Executive of European Energy Exchange Group (EEX) and a board member of Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s European subsidiary (CME Europe).

Dr. Menzel was the first CEO of EEX which under his leadership became the globally leading energy exchange. He was the founding CEO of European Commodity Clearing AG (ECC), Europe’s leading energy clearing house, and founding Chairman of EPEX Spot SE, the worldwide leading electricity spot exchange. He also was an Independent Director and Board Member of CME Europe Ltd., the European subsidiary of the globally leading derivatives exchange Chicago Mercantile.

“Whilst exchanges have been using clearing facilities for decades in order to mitigate counterparty default risks for their participants, OTC markets, despite significant steps forward with solutions like bilateral netting agreements, are still largely lagging behind. Fidectus is offering a cloud-based solution to make post-trade processes significantly more efficient and faster. In other words: Fidectus makes post-trade less risky and cheaper.“, says Menzel.

„Dr. Hans-Bernd Menzels outstanding experience in managing processes and risks from exchange and over-the-counter financial and commodity transactions will help make Fidectus' innovative services available to a wide range of professional market participants. “, says Dr. Jens Bartenschlager, CEO and co-founder of Fidectus.

For more information, please contact us.

Zürich, November 12, 2020 – Fidectus' next generation post-trade services are now available in North America for the OTC energy trading market. Merely upgrading the legacy back-office settlement process for OTC trades brings value by delivering a single workflow, a standards-based approach to what has traditionally been an ad hoc approach for each energy trader.

The Fidectus Global Energy Network brings advanced automated netting, an immutable audit trail, and many other advanced features that drive value from the first settlement. Implementing Fidectus today provides the foundation for high-value transformation for years to come. Fidectus has vetted its technology with European and global energy trades. Today many large energy traders use the Fidectus commercial platform for monthly settlement runs. Many traders start the journey to electronic settlement, merely looking for operational savings and quickly realize how transformative the Global Energy Network is for the entire business.

Back office, treasury, and risk leaders will want to find out how next-generation post-trade processing provides a competitive advantage. To find out more, contact jeff.wagner@fidectus.com.

Zürich, October 22, 2020 – Fidectus is proud to announce Mark Hemsley as an Advisory Board Member. Mark was a founding member and CEO of BATS Europe, which launched in October 2008. After the acquisition by Cboe Global Markets, Mark became President of the European division. Mark helped building BATS into the leading stock exchange group in Europe, surpassing legacy markets which had been in operation for centuries, and which became a Recognized Investment Exchange (RIE) in 2013. He received the Financial News “Decade of Excellence Award” for outstanding contribution to Capital Markets. In 2018, he received the “Industry Leader of the Year Award”. And just recently in 2020, Mark’s work driving the transformation of the trading landscape in the region was recognised with him receiving the Financial News “Editor’s Choice Award”, a lifetime achievement award.

“Currently, over-the-counter energy and commodity trades suffer from extensive time lags when it comes down to confirmation, settlement, and payment. Fidectus’ next-generation post-deal solutions close this cross-company gap and move OTC energy and commodity trading towards exchange like efficiencies”, says Mark Hemsley.

The Fidectus co-founders would like to thank Mark for his already afforded commitment. “Mark’s extensive experience of capital markets, exchanges and trading platforms are invaluable to Fidectus and its customers”, says Dr. Jens Bartenschlager, CEO and co-founder at Fidectus.

For details please contact us.

Zürich, September 18, 2020 – Fidectus is proud to announce Steve Swanson as an Advisory Board Member. Steve developed the first High Frequency Trading platform, Automated Trading Desk (ATD), in 1989. After twelve years of growing the company, Swanson was named President and CEO where he was responsible for increasing ATD’s market share to 7% of US daily equity trading volume. In 2007, ATD was sold to Citigroup for $680 million, where Swanson was global co-head of electronic trading for equities. Steve served as Chairman of the NASDAQ Quality of Markets Committee and is a past member of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association committee for Trading & Markets. In 2011 Steve was named one of “The Top 10 Innovators of the Decade” by Wall Street Technology for the market changes ATD influenced.

“Fidectus post-deal services help Over-The-Counter (OTC) energy trading make a step change into the future. Costs per trade for energy traders are currently ten times as high as for investment banks, mostly due to dated legacy technology and manual work. Fidectus services provide the technological advances needed to level the playing field for OTC energy trading extending the value of OTC trading by putting cash back into the business”, says Steve Swanson.

“Steve’s experience as a founder and pioneer in the trading industry is invaluable to Fidectus and our customers”, says Chris Sass, Chief Commercial Officer and co-founder of Fidectus.

For details please contact us.

Zürich, September 03, 2020 – Fidectus is proud to announce Dr. Walter Steinmann as an Advisory Board Member. Walter served more than 15 years as the Director of the Swiss Office of Energy and brings tremendous experience of the Swiss and European energy landscape. Besides Fidectus, Walter currently acts as a Senior Advisor to Credit Suisse Energy Infrastructure Partners and holds two Board of Director positions for Fluxswiss and Transitgas.

“I am honored to have been invited to be Advisory Board member of such an innovative and agile company. Fidectus’ solutions are poised to disrupt the over-the-counter energy trading industry by fully digitalizing the post-trade process. As former responsible for economic promotion in the cantons Solothurn and Basel-Landschaft, I am proud to see the international energy industry being transitioned with Swiss made innovation”, says Dr. Walter Steinmann.

The Fidectus co-founders would like to thank Walter for his already afforded commitment and are looking forward to more exchange of ideas .

For details please contact us.

Zürich, August 19, 2020 – This week Jeff Wagner, founder and former CEO of Aquilon, joined Fidectus AG. Jeff founded Aquilon Inc. in 2012, pioneering North American settlement matching by establishing the first collaborative, cloud-based platform to automate wholesale energy settlements. 

“The European standardization effort led by EFET is the right way forward as the North American approach lacks industry standards creating constraints and scalability issues. I am very happy to be joining Fidectus AG and to embrace a standards-based approach. The Global Energy Network (GEN) offers incredible potential as it leverages open interfaces without forcing clients to rely on proprietary third-party connectors”, says Jeff Wagner.

“Jeff’s experience and knowledge bring all of our customer’s value and we are excited to have him join our team”, says Chris Sass, CCO of Fidectus AG.

For details please contact us.

Zürich, August 05, 2020 – Today, Fidectus is proud to announce RWE Supply & Trading GmbH, one of Europe’s leading energy traders, has chosen the Global Energy Network (GEN) as its platform for electronic Settlement Matching (eSM). 

“The Fidectus GEN helps us to further automize our post-trade process, while also laying the foundation for future benefits such as multilateral netting and predictive financial analyses”, says Emma Law, Head of Back Office at RWE Supply & Trading.

Going Live with the Global Energy Network marks a historic milestone for the energy industry. By removing the last manual process step in the OTC energy deal life cycle the post-trade process is now fully digitized. Implementing eSM on the Global Energy Network enables energy traders to significantly reduce settlement risk and optimize working capital while supporting the industry’s transition towards more sustainable operations. 

For details please contact us.

Zürich, April 28, 2020 – First market mover Fidectus makes electronic Settlement Matching (eSM) a reality on the Global Energy Network (GEN). Leading European OTC energy trading market participants have moved from pilot to commercial use in April 2020. They are taking competitive advantage of an open network with best user experience and reducing working capital costs at the same time. Initiating eSM on GEN launched a future-proof technology lifecycle. It is providing new and innovative tools for improving energy trader’s financial performance.

Part of GEN’s magic lays in the simplicity and flexibility provided to market participants. The barriers to using GEN are extremely low by design. Considerable effort went into ensuring an agnostic approach of connecting to the platform. Support for just about every type of connectivity and data format allows participants to integrate without the added cost of middleware or integration adapters. Integration options are complimented by optical character recognition (OCR), enabling even the smallest and most restricted market players to experience the future of electronic settlement today. No matter how a market player chooses to interface with GEN, they are safe in the knowledge that GEN is a standards-based and interoperable platform committed to all our customer’s success. 

This month’s launch of eSM on GEN includes market participants of all sizes. Going live with one of Europe’s largest energy trader as well as mid-size and smaller traders validates the platform’s support for diverse requirements. The commercial launch provides any market participant the opportunity to kick the tires and use eSM with zero risk.

For details please contact us.

Zürich, March 11, 2020 – The European Federation of Energy Traders (EFET) asked for feedback and updated the CpML schema for eSM. A powerful tool in the decision process was feedback received from interested traders and the real world experience gained from the Fidectus pilot group. The Fidectus pilot group leveraged a working knowledge gain over the past year validating the industry’s first commercial platform. “The industry has started to take seriously the points our pilot customers called out last year. We value the community's input and will continue to make our recommendations transparent to the workgroup and community at large.“ said Dr. Jens Bartenschlager, CEO of Fidectus.

With the publication of version 2.0.3. of the eSM CpML schema, EFET implements the findings of Fidectus’ pilot group customers. The update ensures a leaner schema structure and more efficient processing with reduced strain on platform capacities and less potential for errors.   

For details please contact us .

Zürich, November 14, 2019 -  History milestone passed. Last week a number of trading organizations performed electronic settlement for OTC trades at Fidectus AG in Zurich Switzerland. For the first time, leading energy traders logged into their Global Energy Network accounts with real-world invoices and purchase orders to perform settlement with actual counterparties. The first electronic matches and bilateral nettings were produced within minutes. 

Participants included Fidectus' Pilot member companies as well as industry members at large. With electronic settlement validated industry members are focused on implementation details. Fidectus wants to thank all the companies who participated in this historic event. 

If your organization missed out on this historic event and has an interest in electronic settlement, please be sure to join our next real-world hands on session. For details contact  us.