ALGO Technologies, the new trading technology firm headed by former Chi-X Europe COO Hirander Misra, has formed a trading network company with fibre-optic connectivity provider FibreSpan.
The new firm, called AlgoSpan, aims to offer the “shortest path network” for linking traders to US and European execution venues. The joint venture aims to draw on FibreSpan’s knowledge of the construction and maintenance of dark fibre and ultra-high-bandwidth networking services and ALGO Technologies’ expertise in providing trading technology. ALGO Technologies aims to deliver products such as near-zero-latency market data, direct market access and smart order routing over the network.
AlgoSpan offers fibre connectivity and co-location services to venues in the US and Europe, as well as point-to-point connectivity from clients’ premises to exchange data centres. The founders claim the connectivity combination offered will cut transaction latency, allowing customers to execute with near-zero latency by using the shortest path available.
Robert Bicket, CEO of FibreSpan, has been appointed CEO of AlgoSpan. Misra, along with his fellow co-founders of ALGO Technologies – Dr. Rami Habib and Alexei Lebedev – and FibreSpan chairman Peter Caplan, have been named board directors of the joint venture.
“While exchange/MTF latencies have improved dramatically over the last few years, this improvement is all too often undermined by the legacy telecommunications networks carrying messaging between traders and exchanges,” said Misra in a statement. “AlgoSpan will reduce data and transaction telecommunications carrier latency as close as it is possible to get to the speed of light.” He added that the combination of the AlgoSpan network with ALGO Technologies’ trading tools would provide trading firms with a one-stop shop for services such as connectivity and market data.
“Bandwidth and latency have become key considerations in today’s trading environments. The market is experiencing significant growth in automated and algorithmic trading as well as a major increase in message volumes,” said Bicket. “By directly interconnecting algorithmic trading engines to an exchange’s technical infrastructure through our services, traders can benefit from a significant reduction in latency – helping to shave milliseconds from the time needed to process transactions through exchanges.”
ALGO Technologies, established in March, is co-owned by Misra, Habib, Lebedev and US technology provider and high-frequency trading firm ALGOEngineering. The firm plans to offer a range of execution tools to compete with offerings from existing trading technology and connectivity vendors.