Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Barclays Bank PLC, has signed up to receive order flow from Fidessa's global connectivity network.

Fidessa users are now able to route care order flow and perform DMA trading through Barclays Capital across North American, European, Asian and Australasian markets.

This agreement enables Fidessa's users to electronically execute cash equities and CFDs through Barclays Capital. Barclays Capital also supports trading in derivatives and users can expect to benefit from this later this year when the Fidessa trading platform is extended to support other asset classes in addition to cash equities.

Kristian West, head of European equity execution for Barclays Capital's prime services group said: 'We are very pleased to be part of the Fidessa network which provides the buy-side with a reliable, low latency, high performance connection.  As an agency only, non-conflicting broker we offer confidentiality and transparent pricing. Fidessa opens up a whole new market for us to tap in to and we plan to add algorithmic trading capabilities later this year to continue to expand our service offering through the Fidessa network.'

Barclays Capital joins over 140 financial players on Fidessa's global connectivity network which includes Cheuvreux, CSFB, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Lehmans, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS providing execution services for global markets.

Fidessa's connectivity network aims to provide a fully normalised, robust, broker-neutral solution for clients wishing to route order flow to a variety of sell-side destinations. Typical uses of the network include buy-side to sell-side connectivity and broker-to-broker connectivity to support non-member trading across numerous markets. Access to the Fidessa order routing network is available via the Fidessa trading platform, the Fidessa Execution Management Workstation as well as via direct FIX connection.

The Fidessa product suite provides trading, market data and connectivity solutions to over 8,500 users at 200 clients around the world.