Regions

The European Commission has issued its proposals to ensure “safe and sound derivatives markets” in Europe and will announce draft legislation in 2010.

Mary Schapiro, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, has outlined the regulator’s proposals for reforming dark trading in a statement released before the SEC’s open meeting on ‘non-public trading interests’ this afternoon.

While Asia-Pacific lacks an equivalent of Europe’s MiFID or the US’s Regulation ATS, there is still strong impetus for the development of alternative trading venues in the region, according to John Lowrey, CEO of trading platform operator Chi-X Global.

Exchange group NYSE Euronext will allow US dark pools to print trades on the FINRA/NYSE Trade Reporting Facility and display their daily activity on the nyse.com website from next month.

Middle Eastern investment bank EFG-Hermes has said joining global FIX-based connectivity networks will allow it to improve handling of high-touch client orders by reducing the inefficiencies of manual trading methods.

Low-latency data provider ACTIV Financial has teamed with Japanese network and IT infrastructure provider KVH Co to offer high-speed market data dissemination to financial institutions in Japan.

Brazilian hedge fund Kairos Asset Management has chosen financial software firm StreamBase’s complex event processing (CEP) platform to build a new high-frequency trading system for equities and foreign exchange.

Agency broker ConvergEx has retained James Elkins, a founder of transaction cost analysis firm Elkins/McSherry, as a consultant to its plan sponsor business. Elkins will advise ConvergEx on how customised transition management strategies can be used to reduce the costs associated with portfolio restructuring.

Nomura Securities International, the US brokerage division of Japanese investment bank Nomura, has released a new set of US algorithmic trading strategies as it continues to expand its global offering.

Thomson Reuters has become the first data vendor to offer a direct market data feed from SBI Japannext, a Japanese proprietary trading system (PTS) for equities.