Pricing Partners, founded in 2005, is a

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre. Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corpora ...

company that is both a financial software editor and a valuation service company. It is headquartered in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

with offices in Paris,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

. The company provides pricing models, analytics and independent valuation for the financial services market. The company has been identified by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

as one of the promising French startups that uses Microsoft technologies for its software development. The coverage of its financial library is on all major asset classes. This encompasses derivatives on asset classes like interest rates, credit, equity, inflation, foreign exchange, commodity, life insurance and hybrids. Since 2012, it also provides independent calculation and valuation on proprietary algorithmic indexes.

Product

The product is addressing the needs for more transparency on

financial products Financial services are the economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies ...

. Pricing Partners has developed an online platform (entitled Price-it) that provides independent valuation on OTC derivatives. The computations are based on scientific methods with mathematical probabilistic models (models extending the

Black–Scholes model The Black–Scholes or Black–Scholes–Merton model is a mathematical model for the dynamics of a financial market containing derivative investment instruments. From the parabolic partial differential equation in the model, known as the Black� ...

History

After years of research in the fixed income exotics trading desk at Goldman Sachs, Eric Benhamou, returned to France to head a quantitative research group at Natixis. In 2005, he created Pricing Partners to offer independent valuation models with its primary customer, Natixis. In 2007, Pricing Partners decided to build the first French platform for independent valuation of derivatives, in a project supported by the French cluster Finance Innovation to promote the Paris marketplace and compete with the City of London. In 2008, Pricing Partners unveiled a new version of its software that ran on a computing grid to reduce dramatically the computing time. In 2009,

France identified Pricing Partners as one of the promising startups to develop software in finance with the use of the latest Microsoft technology. Pricing Partners was accepted in the IDEES program. The same year, Axa Hedging Services selects Pricing Partners to value part of its fixed income positions. In 2010, Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking taps Pricing Partners to provide independent valuation on its structured products. In 2011, this company received the award for the best pricing and analytics solution for

structured product A structured product, also known as a market-linked investment, is a pre-packaged structured finance investment strategy based on a single security, a basket of securities, options, indices, commodities, debt issuance or foreign currencies, and ...

s in all asset classes. This award was given by Structured Products Magazine. The same year,

ICBC Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC; ) is a Chinese multinational bank. Founded as a limited company on 1 January 1984, ICBC is a state-owned commercial bank. With capital provided by the Ministry of Finance of China, the b ...

, the largest bank worldwide, signed with Pricing Partners. In 2012, Pricing Partners receive a new distinction ranking by the Structured Products magazine in the category of structured products' valuation software. The same year, Pricing Partners started commercializing an independent valuation solution for proprietary and algorithmic indexes and tapped Natixis. In 2013, Pricing Partners continues to be named to the Structured Products magazine ranking in the structured products' valuation software. In June 2013, the company is acquired by the

group. Finally, in December, Pricing Partners is named the Most Innovative Specialist Vendor of the year by

Risk Magazine ''Risk'' magazine provides news and analysis covering the financial industry, with a particular focus on risk management, derivatives and complex finance. It includes articles and papers on credit risk, market risk, risk systems, swap option p ...

Competitors

Pricing Partners' main competitors are: * for its software business: Numerix, SunGard-FastVal, Fincad * for its valuation business:

Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and m ...

Markit Markit Ltd. was a British financial information and services company with over 4,000 employees, founded in 2003 as an independent source of credit derivative pricing. The company provides independent data, trade processing of derivatives, fo ...

, SunGard-FastVal, Prism Valuation, SuperDerivatives, Societe Generale Security Services

References

{{reflist Financial services companies of France Financial services companies established in 2005 Financial software companies