The LSE Directory / Trading software
Charles River Development (CRD) makes Charles River IMS (Investment Management Solution), front-office software that investment managers use to run portfolio management, order and execution management, compliance and trading in one system across asset classes. The platform is delivered as the core technology layer of State Street Alpha, which pairs CRD's front-office tools with State Street's middle and back office services (post-trade settlement, data management and reporting) so a client can run its investment process front-to-back from a single provider rather than stitching together separate systems. CRD's differentiator within the order/execution management software category is that it does not simply offer a standalone OMS or EMS; it is the front-office component of a bundled, provider-owned front-to-back stack. Competitors in the space (dedicated OMS/EMS vendors, or firms offering only one leg of the trade lifecycle) generally do not also own the custody, settlement and data servicing relationship for the same client the way State Street does through Alpha. CRD's customer base skews toward large institutional investment managers, asset owners, insurers and wealth managers rather than smaller buy-side shops, reflecting the scale of implementation the platform requires. It also offers a separate Wealth Management Solution line (Tailored Portfolio Solutions, Wealth Hub, Charles River Everywhere) and Data Solutions (Enterprise Data Management and a Data Platform) alongside the core IMS. Peter Lambertus, a former U.S. Navy nuclear submarine officer, founded the company in 1984 and led it as president and CEO for over three decades. State Street Corporation acquired Charles River Development in 2018 for approximately 2.6 billion dollars, folding it into what became the State Street Alpha platform. The company is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts. As of the company's own current figures, Charles River IMS is used by roughly 315 clients in about 30 countries, including 55 of the 100 largest investment managers globally, managing over 59 trillion dollars in assets on the platform, with more than 30,000 professionals using the technology. State Street has continued expanding Alpha's scope since the acquisition, including a State Street Alpha for Private Markets offering and portfolio and risk analytics partnerships (for example with Axioma, announced in 2019) to extend the IMS beyond public-market instruments.
