Spreadsheet Consultants

Spreadsheet Consultants

Microsoft Excel / VBA

Contact us

Phone: +44 20 8668 7731

Our clients

International clients include ABN Amro, Barclays Bank, Chemical Bank, Coopers & Lybrand, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Paribas Capital Markets, UBS Private Banking, and UBS Warburg. Our IT team has implemented tailored financial tools for our clients in Amsterdam, London, Milan and Zurich, in New York and even as far as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.

The business

We have implemented spreadsheet solutions for our clients in the following business areas:

Equity Research; Client Portfolio Management; Asset Allocation; Risk Management; Risk Limits Control; Revaluations; International Profit And Loss; and Position Monitoring.

These tools have been developed for the following products:

Equities and Equity Derivatives; Equity Index Derivatives; Bonds and their Derivatives; Structured Interest Rate Derivatives; Credit Derivatives; Commodities and Commodity Derivatives.

Our global projects

The late 1990s saw the merger of two Investment Banks creating one of the largest American banks. One particular project became very high profile during that time. We were responsible for the successful implementation in London and Milan of the Revaluation of End of Day Rates tool for Risk. This involved automating the collation of closing Deposit and Swap rates to revalue Structured Traders’ Interest Rate Swaps positions together with the collation of end of day Futures prices. Using Teknekron TIBLink, external rates (up to 3 sources covering overnight to 30 years for each of 33 currencies) and prices are obtained automatically from Reuters and Telerate with calculated average offer rates (Deposits) and average mid rates (Swaps). Integrating external rates with rates provided by traders, each responsible for one or more currencies with each currency's rates held in individual Excel spreadsheets accessed by separate PCs. Final rates are automatically transferred to a Unix Sybase Revaluation and Risk Management system for zero coupon curve generation and risk calculation, resulting in considerable reductions in overtime. Although this tool was introduced as a short-term rapid application development tool, it proved so successful that its life continued for more than three years.

The Managing Director of the International Capital Markets Division and his Business Manager at an International Bank asked us to manage the day-to-day support and enhancements of a Securities Position Keeping and Risk Management system. This database maintained global positions for Fixed Rate Bonds, FRNs, Perpetuals, Convertibles, Loans, Asset Swaps, Bond Futures, Money Market Futures and Credit Derivatives. This involved the monitoring of global limits by currency and product to comply with Bank of England regulations and Value at Risk requirements. Other risk management included the reporting of single issuer limits and thresholds for issuer credit rating groupings. Risk/revaluation by currency and paper type, and interest rate basis point variation by maturity bands were also summarised. Traded books were transferred between locations and made available to Securities traders in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney and throughout Europe. Enhancements included a significant improvement in the limit monitoring capability and risk reporting to comply with Value at Risk methodologies and to incorporate all positions globally.

The Equity Research team at a Private Bank in Zurich came to us to provide them with an immediate solution. They needed to publish recommendations of 700 stocks on the web. There was already a system in place in London but it was unreliable and could only be supported from London. With the setting up of the “Investment Center” in Zurich, the emphasis on the business had now shifted from London to Zurich. So a client-specific tool centred around Equity analysis based in Zurich was a must. Within three weeks our consultants rapidly produced a tool which captured Equity price data from Reuters and which allowed 18 Equity analysts from Zurich, London, New York, Hong Kong and Singapore to publish their stock recommendations on the web. This project highlights the advantage of Rapid Application Development in that solutions can be up and running in a very short time. The requirements were then refined and we were able to tailor the tool to meet the ever-changing needs of our client. Price information for 700 stocks traded on more than 20 exchanges is now produced automatically. Analysts in five different countries are able to save their recommendations on stocks from Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific region, based on these prices. They are also able to revise their price targets, earnings per share forecasts, price/earnings estimates and dividend information. At the touch of a button the user in the Publications department in Zurich is able to combine all this information into a single spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is transferred automatically to a fully formatted document and then converted into pdf format for publishing on the web. During the course of the project the users were fully trained in using the new tool, being hand-held through the on-going changes. The Stock Buy List tool was supported and maintained until maintenance was down to a minimum. Support was then handed back to the IT department. The technology in this case was Reuters, Excel and Word, put together with VBA code.

Other projects have included:

The development of a menu-driven Profit and Loss Reporting System (MIS) showing daily, monthly and yearly P&L data for a French Investment Bank;

Providing training consultancy and tailored training in all aspects of office automation, both on a group and on an individual basis to employees at all levels of an English Investment Bank;

Providing tailored PC training to small groups and individuals including senior management and managing directors for banks and other financial institutions;

Financial charts displaying time-series market data were automatically created in batch mode overnight on either a daily or monthly basis and integrated with text in report form with little user intervention for a Swiss Bank;

Setting up an Executive Decision Support System that monitors Information Systems’ accounts data by department, by cost and over time. The system was fully automated to feed database data into an analytical and graphical report that was produced on a monthly basis and despatched to senior management for an American Bank.

Our mission

“The Lord demands fairness in every business deal; He sets the standard.” (Proverbs 16:11). Whilst our mission is to provide highly specialist Excel spreadsheet and VBA consultancy services to meet the global needs of our international clients at a realistic and reasonable price, we promise to do this with fairness. We also promise to give back a share of our profits to the community and to good causes and charitable organisations throughout the world.