Bayerische Hypo and Vereinsbank merged in 1998 to form HypoVereinsbank or HVB, creating the one of the largest private German financial institutions and the second largest German retail bank. In late 2005, it became part of the UniCredito Italiano SpA group.

Subsequent to the merger, HVB created a single Back Office in London for the settlement of the bank’s trading activity in Treasury products. The combined business was seeing rapidly growing volumes but the internal processes and procedures were under strain.

Michael Wiedemann, then Head of Operations and Technology for Europe, had first become aware of PaceMetrics at an Operational Risk Industry event. He saw it as “offering benefits in terms of reduction of errors and of saving operational losses”. The bank already had proprietary monitoring software in place in the FX and Money Markets areas.  But as Michael says “the ideas behind PaceMaker and our proprietary software are similar. But PaceMaker operates in real-time and offers attractive presentation and drill-down capabilities”