CTRM Blog

Last week I attended the SolArc meeting in London along with my colleagues Patrick Reames and David Steele. I was honoured to present the keynote address to the meeting which was extremely well organized and attended. Brad Anderson, CEO of SolArc, provided an update on SolArc and its activities and future plans in the morning. [...] Related posts:

1. SolArc sell Natural Gas Software to Sprague

CommodityPoint is conducting research into alternative delivery mechanisms for CTRM software such as SaaS and hosted, for example, to determine the trends and establish some benchmark data around SaaS, hosted and other delivery models. Recent CommodityPoint research and vendor and end user briefings suggests that alternative delivery models for CTRM seem to be catching on as [...] Related posts:

1. CommodityPoint Launch Two New Studies for 2010

ZE PowerGroup was established in May 1995 by Dr. Zak El-Ramly as a strategic consulting and software development firm to serve the emerging needs of energy markets in transition. It’s product; ZEMA, an Enterprise Data Management (EDM) solution designed for supporting risk management, trading, and operations at energy and financial firms, is widely used in [...] No related posts.

Last week, David Steele (President of UtiliPoint International, Inc.), Patrick Reames (MD, CommodityPoint, Americas), Mark Tredway (Director of Business Development, CommodityPoint) and myself spent a couple of days in Prague doing some business. The weather, although cold, was actually quite nice and we did manage to get some sight seeing in too ably directed by [...] Related posts:

1. Energy Risk – Prague

Late last year, I spoke at and chaired a roundtable discussion at the Energy Risk Conference in Prague, Czech Republic. One of the roundtable participants was Mr. David Kučera, General Secretary of the Prague Power Exchange (Power Exchange Central Europe, a.s.) and I was fascinated to learn something of the challenges and hurdles he and [...] No related posts.

Sometime around the middle of the month, CommodityPoint will issue the first version of our CTRM Vendor and Product Sourcebook. We anticipate this becoming the tool of choice for those seeking to find CTRM software. It will of course be entirely FREE and available from our websites. Meanwhile, here is what a vendor listing will [...] No related posts.

Triple Point announced that Hess Corporation has selected its Commodity XL for Oil(TM) product to manage its supply, trading, risk, and logistics for crude oil and refined products. Meanwhile, Brady also announced that it had signed The Mitsubishi Corporation, Tokyo, in 2009 to extend the use of Brady’s trading and risk technology to [...] No related posts.

Sounding like a character from StarWars, the WOCU is the World Currency Unit, a derivative of the exchange rates of the world’s top 20 economies (as measured by GDP). The Wocu was apparently conceptualised in 1996, and after much research and discussion over the next decade, whilst the concept was tested for volatility and other [...] No related posts.

Coming up on quite a busy period here in the Czech Republic. At the end of this week, CommodityPoint will move its office to the prestigious International Business Center in Brno where we will be much better equipped for client visits and the addition of further staff during the year. Then next week I will [...] No related posts.

This interview is the second in a series of interviews with major consultancies in the Commodities Trading & Risk Management area. I had the opportunity to visit with David Edwards of UK-based Baringa Partners and ask him a few questions about his firm and the commodities trading and risk management industry in Europe. Dr. Gary Vasey: [...] No related posts.

Apparently JP Morgan is in the process of buying much of RBS Sempra here in Europe on the back of a European Commission ruling ordering RBS to divest its holding. JP Morgan said it would purchase RBS Sempra’s global oil unit, its profitable metal trading business and operations in coal, freight and power and gas [...] No related posts.

UK-based Contigo has signed three new clients for its EnTrader software in the last three months I learned at E-World in Essen last week. I met with David Calmonson of Contigo to learn a bit more about the company, its products and recent activities. Contigo seem to have found an opening in the UK [...] No related posts.

CommodityPoint in partnership with Global Change Associates completed its research into Emissions Monitoring and Trading Software late last year. The report’s management summary is reproduced below; Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions have been receiving a lot of attention recently as the change in US Administration along with President Obama’s declarations on the matter appear to mean a [...] Related posts:

1. Emissions Software-Are We Ready?

This study was designed to examine Risk Management in the Energy and Commodities Market in order to produce: • A review of the current state of risk analytics used in the market; • An assessment of the systems deployed there; • The key risk management requirements of companies trading in the market; • An assessment of where risk management is headed in [...] Related posts:

1. CommodityPoint/Seminel Risk Management Study Report Issued

I hadn’t been to E-World for a couple of years but it is a vibrant and extremely well attended trade show. We met up with a number of CTRM vendors there including; Navita, SolArc, GSML, Murex, OLF/IRM, Contigo, Abacus Solutions, Triple Point, and others. E-World is a broad show that covers everything from trading and [...] Related posts:

1. E-World, Essen and Other Things

The first three weeks of any new job can be a daunting experience– but my three weeks at CommodityPoint literally gives justification to the phrase “my head is going to explode”. The amount of information concerning the commodities and Energy industry that has been passed on to me recently by leading research and expert analysts Dr [...] Related posts:

1. CommodityPoint Welcomes Mark Tredway
2. 2010 – A Big Year for CommodityPoint
3. CommodityPoint 2010

Prior to the collapse of the Merchant energy segment, the North American Trading and Risk Management tradeshow was a vibrant and well attended event but in recent years many of the big tradeshows in that industry space have died off or died out altogether. But not here in Europe! E-World Energy and Water held every [...] Related posts:

1. E-World, Essen and Other Things
2. E-World

Mark Tredway and I will be in Essen next week attending E-World. We are looking forward to meeting up with old colleagues and meeting new ones there. Meanwhile, the Sourcebook is taking shape. We expect the Vendor and Product Sourcebook to be the primary source of information for prospective buyers of CTRM software and it will [...] Related posts:

1. E-World
2. European Energy’s Annual Essen Get Together
3. Three Weeks At CommodityPoint by Mark Tredway

With the aging of the workforce, the energy industry in the United States is facing the loss of the experienced and skilled resources that have developed, deployed and maintained the complex systems that underpin our energy infrastructure and the markets that operate within it. Anticipating the industry’s needs, many universities in the United States [...] Related posts:

1. The Inaugural Edition of CommodityAlert by Gary Vasey & Patrick Reames

The U.S. power industry is all too familiar with trendy policies and ideas, oftentimes thrust upon it by outsiders with an agenda. However, there are trends that energy companies and their vendors would do well to follow closely over the course of the next year. One such trend in the United States is the regulation [...] No related posts.