The CTRM Blog

We launched our all new CommodityAlert this week. In addition to articles of interest to the commodity trading and risk management industry, you can also find the latest news, calendar of events and links to current research projects and reports…

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If there is a single issue today that is bound to cause controversy and a reaction from our readers it has to be that of global warming. My past efforts at discussing this issue have always resulted in a lot of feedback from all sides of the debate. However, I want to tackle this topic again today as it impacts our industry significantly.

An UtiliPoint IssueAlert
Patrick Reames, Managing Director, CommodityPoint

The announcement last week that OpenLink Financial (OLF), one of the world’s largest CTRM solutions providers, had entered into an agreement to acquire their sometime rival (depending on the industry segment) SolArc has created quite a stir in the market. Though we’ve seen a couple of CTRM vendors change hands at the investor level in the last couple of months, including Hellman and Friedman buying into OLF, this new announcement reflects the largest acquisition of one vendor by another in this space for many years, and is a combining of two of the top five CTRM solution providers.

Gary M. Vasey, Ph.D.: How did Woodlands Solutions, LLC get started and what where your objectives in setting up the company?

Mike Muse: We started Woodlands Solutions because we kept hearing from energy companies that they weren’t able to find an ETRM solution that fit both their requirements and their budget leading many of them to continue on with their internal solutions, often not much more than a collection of spreadsheets.

Recently, CommodityPoint published its research report, “Commodity Trading and Risk Management Consultants & Systems Integrators in Trading & Risk Management Market Research and Report, Part One—North America¹,” which looked at the consulting and systems integration landscape as it relates specifically to E/CTRM software in North America. One sponsor of that study was SunGard Global Services, and we recently discussed some of the report’s findings with Mr. Austin Morris, Global Managing Partner, Energy at SunGard Global services.

High Demand for Services