Deutsche's Beeston will head Creditex spinoff

T-Zero, a newly launched company spun-off from Creditex to improve credit derivatives processing, has named Mark Beeston as its first president.

Beeston was formerly chief operating officer for integrated credit trading at Deutsche Bank in London. T-Zero was developed by Creditex staff, but will run as a separate company although both it and Creditex will both be owned by an unnamed holding company.

“T-Zero will remove the operational risk and bottlenecks in the previously paper-based confirmation system, which was slowing growth in credit derivatives,” said Beeston.T-Zero says its aim is to improve throughput in the credit derivatives market by providing instant trade-processing and electronic messaging. A key objective of T-Zero’s proprietary technology was to enable interoperability with existing trading and processing platforms when development began in September 2004. Despite its link with Creditex, the T-Zero system will be 'agnostic' and will work with trading systems offered by Creditex, GFI, Icap and other inter-dealer brokers, as well as the present confirmation system offered by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC).

However, it is unclear whether the other brokers will be willing to use a product developed by a rival broker. “At this stage we feel that our ability to solve the requirements of the banks for a flow of information into their systems is something that we can do ourselves, bridging off the infrastructure that we have already,” said one Icap official.

Sunil Hirani, formerly Creditex chief executive and now chief executive of the holding company, said: "Given his strong experience and insights into derivatives operations, Mark is uniquely qualified to lead T-Zero in bringing the much-needed solutions to the market-place. Automation and connectivity are crucial to helping the industry move to the next level of growth."