Coleman Fung

Coleman Fung is a successful survivor of both the dot.com and energy trading fever. As founder and Chief Executive Officer of OpenLink, he has guided this leading provider of trading, risk management, and operations software solutions through a decade of extreme business and economic challenges.

Fung launched OpenLink without outside investment in1992. Within two years, the start-up company got its first real break from JP Morgan, which was in the market for a comprehensive trading and risk management system. Impressed with OpenLink's system, they became a client. "Their selection of OpenLink validated the architectural integrity of our software and gave use the push we needed to go forward," recalled Fung. OpenLink began to grow rapidly, and Fung recapitalized the company in 1998 with a 20 percent equity investment from Coral Energy.

And the growth has been phenomenal and consistent. Between 2000 and 2001, the company realized a 96.76 percent revenue growth. OpenLink now has more than 300 professionals in offices throughout the world, including London, Houston, Berlin, and Sydney, as well as New York.

The success of OpenLink has not gone unnoticed. In a competition sponsored by KPMG LLP, Hofstra University, and Long Island Business News, OpenLink received the "Entrepreneurial Spirit Award" for placing third on the "25 Fastest Growing" list for Long Island's privately held companies in 2002. For the same year, OpenLink was acknowledged for placing fifth in the "Annual Long Island Technology Fast 50" list, a program coordinated by Deloitte & Touche Technology.

The foundation of OpenLink's product suite is the company's "Adaptive, Dynamic, and Integration-friendly (ADI)" platform, providing solutions that support the most rigorous risk management requirements of firms trading in energy, interest rate derivatives, fixed income securities, foreign exchange, money markets, metals, and soft commodities.

OpenLink offers several core products that are fundamentally flexible with an open architecture that can be adapted to meet industry changes and unique customer requirements.

Endur, the company's core product, is a fully integrated, front-through-back-office solution for clients who manage trading and risk management, as well as logistic and operations functions in the key energy markets, including crude, electricity, natural gas, refined products, metals, weather, and emissions. Endur(tm) was designed to cover the entire transaction life cycle in a real time, straight-through-processing environment.

New Products

Findur(tm) , a complementary product, is also a fully integrated, front-through-back-office solution for trading, risk management, and operations, but designed to meet the needs of various financial markets. Findur(tm) is a comprehensive solution serving markets in interest rate derivatives, fixed income securities, foreign exchange, money markets, and other commodities.

OpenLink has also developed ORIEN, a web-centric product that allows clients to create a wide range of dynamic e-business services that leverage the core functionality of Endur and Findur. These external e-business services may include online exchanges, trading hubs, and other web-based services.

OpenLink has a diverse list of clients, including Bank for International Settlements, Bank of Canada, Bank of Scotland Treasury Services, Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, Dexia Credit Local, Duke Energy, Dynegy, , EnCana, Equiva Services LLC, ExxonMobil Gas, Halifax PLC, KeyBank, Manulife Financial, Mirant, Nexen, Regions Bank, RWE Trading Americas, Shell Trading, Vattenfall Europe Trading, and WestLB.

Fung's vision has allowed OpenLink to ride out the recent storms that have battered energy and financial markets. His strategy has been to develop an adaptive set of service models to meet the needs of a broad range of clients, from huge trading firms to niche players around the globe. He has also maintained a unique and strong focus on product development. OpenLink's development budget is much higher proportionately than its competitors.

As OpenLink released impressive third-quarter earnings in December, Fung said that "The softness we have recently faced within our traditional product lines has presented us with the opportunity to shift resources and explore previously untapped markets. Recent strategic staff appointments, ongoing research, and core development initiatives will allow us to capitalize on what will be a different trading and risk management software landscape by the end of 2003."

Fung's goal is to have OpenLink known as a benchmark company with products significantly above the competition without affecting rapid new development. Under Fung's leadership, OpenLink is poised to become the first benchmark company in the business -- "being the best at what we do, with the utmost integrity and business ethics."