Bear Stearns And Charles River Team To Offer Investment Managers Live Executable FX Markets Via FIX; First FIX direct OMS-to-Counterparty Interface.

BURLINGTON, Mass. & NEW YORK -- Investment managers can now trade foreign exchange (FX) in the industry's first direct order management system (OMS)-to-counterparty electronic interface via the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol under a new agreement by Charles River Development and Bear Stearns, the companies announced today.

Charles River, a provider of open, flexible, and scalable investment management systems, developed this interface to help clients execute and manage FX trades; the interface is designed to streamline workflow, improve order spreads and increase compliance capabilities.

Bear Stearns Forex is the first FX counterparty to offer investment managers live executable FX markets directly through an order management system via FIX, the most widely used messaging protocol for industry software. The combination of Bear Stearns Forex and the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) will allow traders to electronically route FX spot, swap, and outright (currency forward) orders to Bear Stearns for immediate execution. The link supports post-trade FIX allocation messages as well as MT304 SWIFT messages. The firms recently completed testing on the interface, which will be available in Version 8 of Charles River IMS, a comprehensive front-to-middle office software suite for portfolio management, order management, real-time compliance monitoring, and centralized post-trade processing.

"We are excited about the interface because it puts trading control back into the hands of money managers," said Randy Brummette, a managing director at Bear Stearns. "Charles River is a leader in pushing the FIX standard forward and we are pleased to work with them. Our shared clients will now have immediate access to a live executable FX market directly through their OMS. The solution goes completely upstream, giving a trader the ability to flatten FX exposure the instant it is created."

"Until now, investment managers have not had the technological tools at their disposal to execute their FX trades directly on a real-time basis," said Peter Lambertus, president and CEO of Charles River. "By utilizing Charles River IMS, managers and traders can seamlessly monitor risk, conduct analysis and effectively cover their FX exposure. The interface with Bear Stearns eliminates potential time lags and strives to close any compliance holes typically seen with other FX workflows."

Michael Hayes, director, strategic alliances at Charles River, said, "More investment managers are utilizing and looking for portfolio management and trading solutions that provide them with direct electronic connectivity to trading venues and partners. In addition, we are seeing investment managers trading across borders more frequently than in the past, and generally paying closer attention to the impact of FX and their overall investment performance. By delivering this innovative FX solution with Bear Stearns, Charles River makes electronic FX trading easier for its clients and as a result, extends its current lead in electronic equity and fixed income connectivity into the FX space."

About Bear Stearns Forex

Bear Stearns Forex Inc. is the foreign exchange trading subsidiary of The Bear Stearns Companies Inc. (NYSE:BSC).

With approximately $49.4 billion in total capital, The Bear Stearns Companies serves governments, corporations, institutions and individuals worldwide. The business includes corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions, institutional equities and fixed income sales and trading, securities research, private client services, derivatives, foreign exchange and futures sales and trading, asset management and custody services. Through Bear, Stearns Securities Corp., it offers financing, securities lending, clearing and technology solutions to hedge funds, broker-dealers and investment advisors. Headquartered in New York City, the company has approximately 11,000 employees worldwide. For additional information about Bear Stearns, please visit the firm's website at http://www.bearstearns.com.

About Charles River Development

Charles River Development is a market-leading provider of software and services to over 170 investment managers in the global mutual fund, banking, pension, hedge fund, wealth management, and insurance industries. The Charles River Investment Management System is a comprehensive front-to-middle-office software suite for all security types that includes Charles River Manager for portfolio management and modeling; Charles River Trader for order management and electronic trading; Charles River Compliance for real-time pre-trade and end-of-day compliance; and Charles River Settlements for centralized post-trade processing. The system incorporates real-time FIX trading via the Charles River Network, a reliable, secure, private financial network.

Charles River IMS features a modern, proven, N-Tier service oriented architecture (SOA) that is highly scalable and supports continuous 24x7 operations. Charles River combined state-of-the art (Java, Microsoft.NET and Web services) and industry standard technologies to ensure Charles River IMS is open, flexible, scalable, functionally rich, and easy-to-use. Message-based APIs and exposed Web services facilitate rapid systems integration.

The company offers many services to complement its software including implementation services and managed services (hosted and remote application management). Founded in 1984, Charles River maintains headquarters in Boston and primary offices in London, Melbourne, Paris and Singapore.