For VARs, Wall Street Mess Creates Upheaval and Opportunities, by Jennifer Bosavage, ChannelWeb
September 17, 2008
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/210602168?queryText=wall+street

ChannelWeb interviews ALaS Managing Director Eric DiGiacomo in this article about  the financial crisis on Wall Street. 

Controls and data governance are the key to minimizing risk and avoiding loss, and will likely be the types of products finance firms will want to implement in the near future, said Erik DiGiacomo, a managing director at ALaS, which offers its industry-agnostic DocPort product to VARs. DiGiacomo has first-hand experience in the financial world, having come from leading the securities group at the Shared Services division of Washington Mutual Bank.

"Producing usable information that shows the health of a process is how Risk Managers will demonstrate their value to the firm. Firms won't avoid risks forever (despite the current logic) and will start taking them again," he said. "[Former Fed Chairman Alan] Greenspan said that today's market is a 'once-in-a-century type event.' I suggest that 75-100 years is about the collective memory of an industry and once we recover from this period I expect the devices we deploy will last another century or so. With the expansion in data and automation, those devices will need to cross divisions, entities, market-players and likely industries."

Writes Securities Industry News...

Folding In Op Risk
"For many firms, Societe Generale's recent EUR4.9 billion ($7.7 billion) loss due to rogue trading has sparked renewed attention to information technology's role in business risk management. At Societe Generale, "'there was extensive manipulation of the data in the front-, middle- and back-office systems, whose controls weren't able to communicate with each other to pick up the discrepancies,'" says Erik DiGiacomo, managing director of New York-based ALaS, a consultancy specializing in post-trade risk."

Soc Gen: Bank's Controls Didn't Work, says report, by Melanie Rodier, Wall Street & Technology
February 4, 2008
http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/blog/archives/2008/02/soc_gen_banks_c.html

ALaS Managing Director, Harjinder Sidhu, is interviewed by Wall Street & Technology about product control. This little known and less talked about function within a financial firm is giving everyone from audit, control to "C" level management something to worry about these days. 

"Harjinder Sidhu, managing director of New York-based ALaS Consulting, suggests that many banks are "'disjointed in their control structure. A lot of money is spent on developing good systems. But not a lot of work is done in bringing them together,'" Sidhu says. "'There should be an enterprise wide control infrastructure. I need to know that all the different trade systems and reporting are all saying the same thing and are consistent.'"
http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/blog/archives/2008/02/soc_gen_banks_c.html