The Client
The London Metal Exchange is the world’s premier non-ferrous metals market. The LME offers futures and options contracts for aluminum, copper, tin, nickel, zinc, lead, aluminum alloy and NASAAC, steel billet, cobalt and molybdenum. Established in 1877 and located in the heart of The City of London, the London Metal Exchange is the world’s premier non-ferrous metals market. It offers a range of futures and options contracts for non-ferrous, minor metals and steel.
The Exchange provides a transparent forum for all trading activity and as a result helps to ‘discover’ what the price of material will be months and years ahead. This helps the physical industry to plan forward in a worldsubject to often severe and rapid price movements. Such is the liquidity at the Exchange that the prices ‘discovered’ at the LME are recognised and relied upon by industry throughout the world.
The LME is a highly liquid market and in 2011 achieved record volumes with 146.6 million lots, equivalent to $15.4 trillion annually and $61 billion on an average business day. Based in London the LME is a global market with an international membership and with more than 95% of its business coming from overseas.
The Brief
Being a principal-to-principal market, the only organisations able to trade are its member firms, of which there are various categories. LME members provide the physical industry with access to the market, to the risk management tools and to the delivery mechanism. Trading takes place across three trading platforms: through open-outcry trading in the ‘Ring’, through an inter-office telephone market and through LME select, the Exchange’s electronic trading platform.
Transputec were engaged by the London Metal Exchange’s current service provider (Xchanging) to provide project management and resource to deliver an office move of one of their key teams with a 3 week time to plan and implement. This involved deploying a new monitor solution (100 new monitors), printing solution (3 new printers and 1 existing printer) and desktop move (28 new PC’s and 29 moves) with Phones. From a network perspective we were required to complete the patching of the new core switches and patch the end user PC’s to the correct networks depending on their job role.
The Solution
We delivered this project over the course of 4 days and we were required to test connectivity of the telephones and ensure the PC’s were all working so that when users arrived at 8 am on Monday they were able to start work without any problems.
“Just a note to say a HUGE thank you for everything and all your hard work over the last few months (especially last week/weekend). It has been a great success and this could not have been achieved without you all” (Laura Edwards, Post Trade Services – LME)
“The Transputec team here at the LME just executed a flawless delivery in moving the LME clearing team into their new offices. We look forward to many more similar engagements with Transputec” (Paul Sadler, Programme Manager – LME)
The Benefits
“We have no IT issues. There a few pieces of on-going work, but the move has gone very smoothly indeed. It’s thanks to Victor, Horace and team that the installations and move has been such a success. They paid very careful attention to the detail of the planning, and have worked proactively throughout to eliminate all potential snags. I am also very grateful to James Day for ensuring such a high standard of project delivery. His planning, efficiency and obliging approach made it seem effortless, despite his current commitments to other projects.”
