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Where do the opportunities lie?

The Discovery approach is to use a single philosophy across multiple sectors and a variety of applications. The founding partner’s significant industry experience in the finance sector is international, with core competencies in management and sales, public communications and high level negotiations, project design and implementation. This experience has been amassed within small start up’s through to large, complex financial groups. Projects are focused on:

 

Electronic Trading

The type of access to financial markets demanded by customers has changed significantly over the last decade – but different asset classes and pockets within markets do not yet take full advantage of the innovation in this area. Sophisticated buy side clients want more control over trade execution and more direct, confidential access to the markets in which they trade. They require greater efficiency, better control and access to liquidity. To this end we have seen enormous advances in smart order routing and automated trading technologies. Innovation will continue in this area to improve workflow, particularly in the area of straight though processing - from order creation, to market execution and the settlement and clearing process.

Much of the innovation we see have seen in the wholesale markets has been motivated by the need to empower institutional investors by decreasing their dependence on intermediaries such as brokers, who have been the traditional gatekeepers to the market. Disintermediation is likely to continue, as brokers and asset managers learn how to co-exist as both competitors and clients.

Liquidity and confidentiality will remain at the top of the priority list for these clients. In recent years, the value of hidden liquidity has resulted in electronic platform innovation designed to give institutional clients and brokers access to what are now known as “dark pools” of liquidity. In securities markets information is power. Traditionally clients and brokers play a cat and mouse game - the broker seeks information and the client reveals the minimum necessary to achieve their goals. They do this as a result of their inherent distrust of brokers and their ability to keep information confidential. There are now many electronic platforms that give clients the ability to find this additional liquidity whilst providing anonymity as to their intentions - they are referred to as crossing networks or block trading networks.

Discovery Consulting has significant experience across this field and will continue to work with all players in this constantly changing area of financial markets.

Service Aggregation

Deteriorating credit markets, and the resulting instability of financial institutions, has put renewed focus on the credit worthiness of counter-parties operating in the Equity markets. Those concerns have been two ways - clients concerned as to the financial stability of their service provider, and of equal importance the banks concern as to their clients financial position. Leading on from this we have seen a much clearer segregation between small, medium and large clients and the types of services they receive from service providers. There are now a large number of hedge fund clients who will no longer be accepted as clients of the largest and most secure financial insti-tutions. A flight of capital away from even previously blue chip banking institutions has seen the best rated banks inundated with new business - not all of which they want. It is the small to medium sized fund managers who have had to rethink the strategy by which they obtain their required services. Many small to medium sized funds are now looking for alternative providers to meet their broad needs - funding, back office and operational service, stock loan and execution services.

There are a number of firms looking to fill this void - but few can provide the full suite of services necessary. Discovery is working to find synergies for all players in this currently fragmented space.

Executive Training

External training for executives will continue to be seen as an important and vital part of developing staff talent, and an intangible but valuable company benefit from the employees perspective. Often the contractual obligations between the Executive training service provider and the company are global in nature.

From the service providers perspective it is only possible to fulfill these global obligations on a fly in / fly out basis as permanent offshore employees cannot be justified. Discovery intends to forge alliances with offshore Executive Programs to facilitate training in the US. The draw card for the training organization would be threefold: access to the senior management experience of Discovery Consulting partners, a reduction in costs associated with relocating local staff to the US, and an ongoing resource in the US to market the training programs of the organization.

Public Speaking and Communications Counseling

Public Speaking, in any of its forms, can be one of life’s most challenging, and for some, frightening experiences. Whilst these emotions can have very mild effects, for many the effects are debilitating and prevent individuals from showing their best attributes to others, and in some cases even participating in activities which under normal circumstances would be pleasurable. The emotional impact can be brief, or measured in weeks or months leading up to a single event or situation.

Discovery has direct experience in lecturing and counseling individuals on the art of public speaking and communication, including counseling on mechanisms to cope with the anxiety issues described above. This topic is not directly dealt with in most organizations - training is offered in the form of Presentation Skills or Selling skills, but not from this perspective.

The workshops offered by Discovery are applicable to any situation in which the individual is the center of attention and is expected (or expects of themselves) to present a positive impression to an individual or group. The workshop is applicable to the arge number of staff who are required to use these skills as part of their job, but suffer significant anxiety issues quietly and without the knowledge of their colleagues. Giving staff an opportunity to explore and manage these issues is of great importance to an organization and its staff - it is seen as an important support function and means to improve staff performance.

Relationship Marketing Initiatives

These initiatives will be opportunistic in nature and rely on the firms’ ability to introduce organizations to high income earners and decision makers.
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