Local start-up, Rantec Research, is celebrating after contributing to the success of a $100m Swiss-based hedge fund which uses innovative software developed at the Northern Ireland Science Park to predict currency market movements.

While major global funds suffered losses of up to 10% in the month of May- the worst performance recorded since the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy – Rantec Research’s automated formulas, EA1, recorded strong profits of 6% for the $100m Hepta GFX Fund.

Rantec Research was born out of a business incubator programme at the Northern Ireland Science Park which is designed to help accelerate the development of fledging enterprises.

Ulster Bank is today celebrating the 10th anniversary of introducing internet banking to Northern Ireland.

The bank today reveals that in the 10 years since it launched its Anytime Banking service, more than £2 billion of banking transactions have been made on its online service in Northern Ireland and around £6 billion across the island.

Are you seeking funding for a high potential product or service? You have the opportunity to be connected with a number of active venture capital investors from the UK and Ireland.

Halo - Northern Ireland’s Business Angel network – has announced the launch of the first ever Business Angel EIS Fund worth a quarter of a million pounds.

Based at the Northern Ireland Science Park – Halo is the first business angel network associated with a highly tax efficient fund of this kind. The fund – which is managed by London-based Fund Manager Javelin Ventures – will provide much needed capital for local entrepreneurs in a bid to help grow NI’s business community.

Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster announced a research and development based investment totalling £4.1 million by Newry company First Derivatives plc in New York today.

The Minister made the announcement on the final day of the Invest Northern Ireland strategic mission to the US, where she met First Derivatives’ North American Director, Chris McAuley, and other senior managers at the company’s New York office.

CCLA, a UK-based fund manager, has chosen Singularity, the leading BPM vendor, to help it achieve greater efficiency and scalability in its operations.

Read the story in full:
http://www.singularity.

The overseas successes of two Northern Ireland companies have helped them secure prestigious all-island business awards.

Portadown’s Kestrel Foods and Newry’s First Derivatives, who have each enjoyed considerable export success in recent times, won the Agri Food and Drink Award and a Special Recognition Award respectively at the Ulster Bank Business Achievers Awards.

The local companies, who qualified for the all-island final by winning a competition amongst Ulster firms, collected their accolades at a gala ceremony in Dublin’s Mansion House last week (Wednesday March 10, 2010).

by David Kirk

StartVI (pronounced Start 6, for reasons that will become clear later) is a new breed of tech startup incubator.  There is nothing like it in Northern Ireland or the ‘promised land’ for start-ups, Silicon Valley.  In the history of business incubators, its’ launch is a defining moment.

Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster today announced US based, CyberSource’s plans to invest almost £2.8million, in R&D at its Belfast centre.

CyberSource is a world leader in the development of payment-management solutions with approximately 295,000 customers worldwide.

Cognotec, the technology innovator that delivered the first automated foreign exchange dealing system, as well as the first hosted e-commerce enabled trading platform is being acquired by First Derivatives plc (AIM: FDP.L, IEX:GYQ.I), a global technology and service provider to the capital markets industry.

Raising investment can often seem confusing and frustrating; however this does not have to be the case. Raising capital is a lot like selling a product; before you even meet prospective clients, you need to decide who to approach, understand their needs and speak their language.

Most UK companies raise their first few rounds of investment from Business Angels and Small Funds within UK and Europe.

by Lyra McKee

Have you ever watched the film Rocky? The rags to riches story of a young boxer, played by Sylvester Stallone, who gets a shot at the ‘big time’ when a contender for the world heavyweight title breaks his hand? It’s inspiring stuff.

Northern Ireland's £5m Invest Growth Fund (IGF) has completed its fourth investment in Sembarc Ltd as part of a financing round from the IGF, Business Angels and other sources of financial support

Sembarc is a leading edge telecoms design company, supplying Intellectual Property solutions targeted at the Next Generation telecoms transport market segment. Sembarc is built around a carrier-class design team specialising in telecoms Silicon Design with Embedded Software and System Architecture (the company is named after these three founding disciplines). The Funds will be used principally for sales purposes and the company is targeting the Data Fabric Market for Inter-organisational Data Integration and Web 2.

Northern Ireland's £5m Invest Growth Fund (IGF) has completed its third investment, taking a stake in Replify as part of a financing round from the IGF and other sources of financial support.

Replify virtualised products accelerate applications over wide area and mobile connections without the need for proprietary hardware. After listening to the market, Replify has focused over half a century’s development experience on development of easy to use, and easy to deploy application acceleration products.

Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster urged more young people to focus on developing their business skills and become part of Northern Ireland’s economic future.

The minister was addressing students at W5 in Belfast at the final of The Make Your Mark Challenge, a national competition for students aged 14-19, funded locally by Invest Northern Ireland and sponsored by the Department of Education. As part of the initiative, NYSE Euronext has partnered with Invest NI to offer a two day trip to New York which includes a visit to the New York stock Exchange for some of the winners.

First Minister Peter Robinson, MP MLA, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, MP MLA, today formally welcomed plans by NYSE Euronext (NYX) to expand the business operations of its NYSE Technologies division in Belfast.

Invest Northern Ireland will provide up to £9.6million to support the move of NYSE Technologies business operations into a new state-of-the-art development facility in 2010 and the creation of up to 400 new technology, operational and corporate jobs, which include 75 positions from a prior agreement, in the coming years.

‘Deal grows our presence in Asia Pacific region and accelerates global expansion’ says CEO Brian Conlon

First Derivatives plc (AIM: FDP.L, IEX: GYQ.I), the Newry based provider of software and consulting services to the world’s financial markets, this morning announced the acquisition of Hologram, an Australian technology company specialising in risk management and data management systems, in a deal worth approximately 2.

In this Wall Street and Technology article Conor Allen, Conor Allen, VP and director of research and development at NYSE Technologies, discusses the use of hardware acceleration in low latency financial systems.

NYSE Technologies absorbed Belfast based Wombat Financial Software.

Read the article in full:

http://www.

This is an interesting article in the FT regarding "near-shoring" of key support services within the Banking sector.

Among the examples given were Citigroup who over the past 18 months, have moved 250 operations jobs, mostly in trade settlement, to Belfast, where they joined more than 500 IT workers.

This bolsters the Citigroup workforce in Belfast to 750 - reinforcing the companies commitment and confidence in Northern Ireland.