Chch, Auckland bridge

Press, 19 July 1988, Page 23

Chch, Auckland bridge

The Christchurch-based share registry, Perkins Hargreaves, has linked two local area networks — one in Auckland — with Digital hardware.

In the wake of the sharemarket crash, Perkins Hargreeaves merged earlier this year with the BNZ share registry, of Auckland. The registrar is now the largest in the country, handling registrations for 150 of the country’s leading stocks. It is owned by the Bank of New Zealand and a group of partners from the accounting firm, Peat Marwick.

The new firm had an IBM-based network in Christchurch and a Prime-based network in Auckland.

In the pre-October bull market, both registries’ computer systems were running to their limit, says Mr Paul Sargison, managing director of Perkins Hargreaves.

“After the merger, we soon realised that we had a problem with incompatibility between the two systems. We needed a system which could handle more than 600,000 shareholdings and provide equal online access to registry staff in both

Auckland and Christchurch,” Mr Sargison said.

"We ended up going with a digital VAX 8530-based network.” Using a new piece of hardware, a Translan Bridge, Digital was able to join the two networks but retain the speed and functionality of a single LAN. Perkins Hargreaves is introducing a wider range of services to sharebrokers and company clients, including dial-up access from an ASCII terminal. "This will be of major benefit in take-over situations, where a company needs immediate feedback on changes in shareholding, or, in the case of a merger, where both companies need to ascertain such details as the level of cross-shareholding between the companies,” Mr Sargison said. “Although each client companies' register is confidential, brokers with appropriate authorisation will also be able to dial-up our database to verify size and ownership status of client shareholdings.” This is the first Translan Bridge installed in New Zealand.