Market data vendor ACTIV Financial has joined connectivity provider Atrium Network’s extranet community and has become one of the first clients to use Exchange Ring, Atrium’s ultra-low-latency network connecting European exchanges and multilateral trading facilities (MTFs).
ACTIV manages market data content and services for more than 300 market-makers, hedge funds and trading systems providers, and therefore has to deal with a wide range of data sources. This, coupled with customer pressure to keep latency to a minimum, prompted the vendor to connect to Exchange Ring.
Exchange Ring connects to several trading venues in Europe, including MTFs Chi-X and Turquoise, and plans to link to all available venues. According to Atrium, Exchange Ring allows firms to access exchanges and MTFs at high speed without needing to invest in co-location at every venue. Agency broker Instinet signed up to use the service in March.
“Successful market data management has previously hinged on two factors: latency and throughput. Now, cost is becoming more of a driving force for market makers and hedge funds alike,” said Frank Piasecki, president and co-founder of ACTIV Financial, in a statement. “Connecting with the Atrium’s Exchange Ring will help ACTIV rapidly enter the European market and reduce the cost of quality market data infrastructure and solutions.”