Rolfe & Nolan secures £1 million from global banks

UK derivatives back-office vendor, Rolfe & Nolan, has secured funding of just over £1 million for its Merlin technology project from two sponsor banks, Deutsche Bank and UBS Warburg.

The funding is for the development phase of project Merlin, a modular system for derivatives processing. Merlin will replace the company's existing RANsys and Risc back-office products. A suite of platform-independent components are being designed to integrate into existing processing environments.

Project Merlin was unveiled in April 2001 with the active participation of UBS Warburg, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and The Royal Bank of Scotland. In December 2001, Rolfe & Nolan said sponsors Deutsche Bank and UBS Warburg agreed to fund the development of the first two major functional modules in the Project Merlin software suite.

A spokeswoman for Rolfe & Nolan told RiskNews that UBS and Deutsche Bank had issued funding for the trade-commissioning module which will be launched in October 2002. She said the other banks were interested in supporting other modules, but would not disclose details about further funding at this time.

Rolfe & Nolan`s chief executive Bob Freeman, previously European managing director, took over from John Lodge as chief executive last September as part of an effort to boost confidence among its customers and shareholders.

Lodge resigned after failed attempts to increase the firm’s core business and bring in much-needed outside investment to fund project Merlin following a two-year plunge in the company’s share price.