(OMN), Macgregor XIP, give clients superior connectivity to all necessary internal functions and external organizations required for a seamless trading environment. Macgregor's extended architecture affords its clients and partners the unique efficiencies and power that can only be achieved through a large, diverse and well-connected community of users.

Macgregor has an appreciation for the incredible speed with which the value of investment information decreases over time as thousands of people at hundreds of organizations chase the same investment opportunities. They recognize that those firms that are a fraction slower, a little less efficient, or who make the slightest mistakes do not fare well. Sustainable competitive advantage they believe can only be achieved by those organizations that can increase the relative speed by which they acquire, process and act on investment information.

They focus our attention on the areas of the investment process where increased speed can have the greatest impact: the front and middle-office. Fundamental to our development approach is an emphasis on optimizing investment operations to improve investment performance, rather than simply minimizing the cost of operations. The cost of not acting fast, they feel, is often greater than the operational costs a firm is trying to save with patient and careful trade implementation methods.

They also believe that the investment process can only be as strong as the weakest link and that a solution that can not integrate the pre-trade, trade and post-trade areas of a client's workflow is inferior. And to do that successfully means extending the solution beyond the investment manager's walls to include the brokers, exchanges, custodians, settlement and clearing organizations and a variety of service providers that are all necessary parts of the investment process.

In 1993 they introduced the industry's first Windows-based trade order management system, Predator. What was most unique about Predator was that in not only integrated the investment manager's internal portfolio management, compliance, trading and operations areas but also real-time market data and a fully supported network that provided access to brokers and other sources of liquidity. In 1997 they established the industry's first FIX network, and in 1999 acquired Merrin Financial to become the industry's leading provider of trade order management systems. Today, Macgregor counts many of the top investment management firms, brokers and ECNs in the world as its clients.

With a pioneering legacy of innovation in the development of technology-based solutions and an unmatched track record of successful system implementations, Macgregor's employees remain dedicated to delivering workflow solutions that improve their client's investment performance.