State Street has bought Currenex, the online foreign exchange trading platform used by currency traders, including banks and hedge funds.
State Street has $564 million in cash - which observers see as a handsome price - but says the purchase will accelerate its growing participation in the electronic foreign exchange trading market.
Advanced Financial Applications (AFA) is adding an options trading capability to its IMPACT Pro platform. Phase I offers clients options trading capabilities, and is available now. Phase II, likely to be release at the end of the first quarter, will include analytics functionality
GL TRADE, a provider of front-to-back solutions for international financial institutions, has launched GL SCANNER, the first options strategy scanner. GL SCANNER is a hosted, server-based solution.
From today, the Spanish derivatives exchange MEFF has expanded its futures and options contracts to cover all the underlying shares in the IBEX 35, and PRISA.
This means MEFF now provides 100% coverage of the Index’s capitalisation, both with futures and with options.
Credit derivatives trade matching and processing services provider T-Zero has hired George Harrington as Chief Operating Officer.
Launched in the summer of 2005, T-Zero claims to have gained strong momentum over the past year as an increasing number of dealers, buy-side market participants and prime brokers sign on for the service. The company claims to have experienced a 338% growth rate in the second half of 2006 compared to the first have of the year.
Patsystems says Nomura Securities International, Inc. in the US has bought its complete trading platform, including the Pro-Mark front-end for high-volume professional traders. Also in the initial phase, Patsystems will provide Nomura with access to CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade), Euronext.liffe and Eurex. This contract follows Patystems' announcement, earlier this month, of a contract signed with US-based Midas Securities to provide Midas with front-end trading systems.
Markit Group, the London-based provider of OTC derivatives trade data, valuation and processing services, has appointed James Savitsky and Thomas Geraghty as Directors within its Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) sales and product development team.
Mellon Financial Corporation has introduced an independent, over-the-counter derivative (OTC) valuation service for a range of swaps and options to institutional clients. Mellon will provide these valuations through third-party vendors, at the direction of the institutions in question.
SuperDerivatives, a provider of option pricing, independent revaluation, trading and risk management systems, has released a new version of SD-IR", its interest rate options and structured products platform. The enhancements made to the system are based on feedback from clients worldwide in banks, hedge funds, asset managers and corporations.
"Over the last two years we've observed that there is a great need for an electronic platform that supports the trading of large blocks of foreign exchange (FX)," says Vijay Kedia, president and CEO, FlexTrade. FX-trading is still conducted over the telephone, which makes it prone to information leakage, says Kedia. "