London-based Fidessa group, provider of the Fidessa and Fidessa LatentZero solutions, has announced that more than 20 clients have now signed up for the first stage of its Intelligent Liqu
London-based Fidessa group, provider of the Fidessa and Fidessa LatentZero solutions, has announced that more than 20 clients have now signed up for the first stage of its Intelligent Liquidity Access strategy in Europe, including several founder members of the Turquoise multilateral trading facility. Fidessa also has a strong pipeline of European clients due to take on the first package of solutions in the next few months.
The first stage of the Intelligent Liquidity Access strategy, which was launched in April, packages the firm’s smart order routing capabilities with low-latency connectivity and distribution, a virtual market grid that provides a view across all the different markets, smart order workflow to support the consolidation of positions across multiple venues, and specific access to leading ‘lit’ venues Turquoise, Equiduct and Chi-X.
It is the first in a series of scheduled releases over the next 18 months that will address the specific demands of trading on the new liquidity venues across Europe.
‘We put a great deal of thought into the implications of multiple liquidity destinations and worked hard to develop a comprehensive set of tools that support the new smart workflow that our enterprise and hosted clients require,’ says Fidessa director of strategy Steve Grob.
‘Fidessa’s European Intelligent Liquidity Access offering enables clients to really take advantage of trading across the post-Mifid landscape and eliminates much of the extensive effort required to develop such essential capabilities in-house.
‘In particular, our clients like the fact that our intention with Intelligent Liquidity Access has been to create a ready-made platform that will be regularly updated over the next 18 months to reflect the new alternative sources of liquidity and interaction between them as they emerge.’
Trevor Gatfield, head of operations at Investec, says: ‘With the introduction of a number of new multilateral trading facilities and the need for smart order routing, Investec has used Fidessa’s Intelligent Liquidity Access offering to engage with these venues, allowing us to provide best execution for our clients and thereby delivering a higher level of service.’
The second stage of the strategy, due for release at the end of this year, will incorporate additional smart order routing functionality that will enhance the ability to make intelligent decisions about directing order flow across multiple venues, and will include access to BATS Europe and Nasdaq OMX Europe. A third stage will add specific dark routing and reporting capabilities, before a hybrid version providing combined dark and light routing becomes available in 2009.
‘Nasdaq OMX Europe is a strong believer in creating a truly transparent pan-European marketplace under Mifid,’ says president Charlotte Crosswell. ‘Connecting Fidessa to Nasdaq OMX Europe provides customers with the ability to build complex routing strategies and ultimately brings customers closer to gaining best execution benefits.’
Adds Grob: ‘The extensive planning and preparatory work we have carried out forms the basis of a detailed roadmap for delivery that offers clients an effective strategy for responding to new market structures as they continue to evolve.
‘The markets are yet to take their final form, and it is impossible at this stage to predict the winners in terms of destinations, but we can say with certainty that fragmentation is here to stay. Fidessa’s Intelligent Liquidity Access strategy is all about anticipating the impact that the changing patterns in the market will have on our clients.’
Fidessa recently launched the Fidessa Fragmentation Index, which measures the state of liquidity fragmentation across order-driven markets in Europe.
The Fidessa product suite provides integrated trading, market data and connectivity solutions to clients including more than 85 per cent of tier-one equity brokers. The Fidessa network provides connectivity to around 1,800 buy-side institutions, 310 brokers and 100 markets worldwide.
Fidessa group is a supplier of multi-asset trading, portfolio analysis, decision support, investment compliance, market data and global connectivity solutions for both buy-side and sell-side clients.
Headquartered in London with offices in New York, Boston, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, Toronto and San Francisco, the group serves some 22,000 users at around 600 clients worldwide. Fidessa was founded in 1981, has revenues of USD350m and employs more than 1,200 people.
