GBST in the red, by design

GBST incurred a loss of $700,000 on revenues of $1.3 million from its effort to break into the market for the supply of comparative data on banking products, financial statements for the year to June 2009 show.

The actual loss on this new business line for the broking technology firm may be even greater given that most of the reported revenues must relate to the long established web developer, Emu Designs, acquired in late 2008 and grouped within the firm's financial services division.

Headed by Denis Orrock, the former chief executive of InfoChoice, GBST appears to have designs on many of the banking customers currently serviced by his former employer.

The GBST target, according to an investor presentation published on Friday, is "distribution, research and data services to the financial services and media industries".

In practice, this means creating the calculators, ubiquitous on the websites of banks, credit unions and others that, for example, allows customers to work out how long it may take to repay a loan or how much interest they may earn from a deposit.