By working with firms like FlexTrade, Appital is aiming to drive the technological infrastructure development necessary to integrate its platform into existing market structures and bring innovation and automation to equity capital markets.
Appital’s platform will be fully integrated with FlexTrade’s FlexTRADER EMS, bringing a historically manual order flow process to an automated platform. Through FlexTrade’s integration with Appital, buy-side firms will have access to the liquidity and efficiency of executing on Turquoise, LSEG’s (London Stock Exchange Group) pan-European MTF with seamless straight-through-processing (STP) to over 20 settlement venues. Sparked by demand from some of the largest asset management firms globally, the integration will offer the buy-side community a more efficient and transparent way to execute large orders with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion.
Andy Mahoney, Managing Director EMEA FlexTrade Systems, says: “This integration with Appital brings transparency and automation to an area of the market traditionally plagued by opacity and outdated, phone based bookbuilding activity. We see significant demand for Appital’s offering from some of our largest asset management customers. As a result, we have been collaborating with Appital to develop standard integration procedures to ensure our clients have seamless access to Appital’s platform directly within the FlexTRADER EMS order blotter to actively participate in the liquidity discovery process in the market for size”.
The integration with FlexTrade has led to the establishment of a working group that includes some of the largest asset managers globally. The group helps mutual clients define how they want to interact with the hard-to-find liquidity in the market and proactively build books of demand, while ensuring that the integration to existing workflows remains seamless. Other EMS providers are now able to code to the established, FIX based protocols, to the benefit of the buy-side community overall.
Dr Robert Barnes, CEO, Turquoise Global Holdings & Group Head of Securities Trading at London Stock Exchange Group, says: “Turquoise is pleased to build on our innovation in partnership with Appital to unlock latent liquidity for the market. Through FlexTrade’s integration, buy-side participants can look forward to Appital’s novel bookbuilding and seamless execution to settlement of liquidity at the right price through Turquoise.”
Mark Badyra, CEO of Appital, says: “In our mission to put buy-side firms in control of their bookbuilding activity we are excited to work with innovative firms like FlexTrade to help us shape the technology infrastructure for EMS integrations. FlexTrade clients and the asset management community can now gain exposure to deal flow opportunities they have not been able to access before. This integration transforms a traditionally manual order flow process, that historically sits outside any EMS, into an automated, electronic platform.
“FlexTrade has been instrumental in developing the Appital workflow alongside ourselves and the team at Turquoise. This is a major step forward for not only our combined client base, but the market as a whole, and we look forward to scaling this integration market-wide in the coming months.”
Appital gives the buy-side community greater exposure to deal flow opportunities they have not been able to access before. Buy-side traders looking to execute large orders in excess of five days ADV, including in highly illiquid, small and mid-cap stocks, have access to real-time visibility, full transparency and maximum control over the bookbuilding and deal distribution process. They can proactively source liquidity and efficiently drive the bookbuilding process in real-time, on one automated platform, with the ability to make distribution adjustments throughout. What’s more, Appital users will be able to execute all deals through the Turquoise MTF, via a single point of access and with seamless straight-through-processing (STP) to over 20 settlement venues.
