Nomura revives Lehman’s Asian trading platform

Japanese investment bank Nomura has launched a new pan-Asian electronic trading platform for equities, integrating the execution capabilities it acquired from its takeover of Lehman Brothers Asia last September.
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Japanese investment bank Nomura has launched a new pan-Asian electronic trading platform for equities, integrating the execution capabilities it acquired from its takeover of Lehman Brothers Asia last September. This follows the launch of Nomura’s European equities platform, created from the acquisition of Lehman’s European division, in January.

The new ModelEx platform, based on Lehman’s algorithmic and direct market access (DMA) suite, will run simultaneously with Experts, Nomura’s existing electronic trading offering, while the pan-Asian capabilities of ModelEx are built out. Experts currently offers DMA in Japan and Hong Kong, and algorithmic trading in Japan, while ModelEx will be connected to equity markets in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.

When the integration is complete, Nomura clients will be able to benefit from the combination of Lehman’s Asian quantitative analytics team, algorithmic developers, information technology and operations personnel, and Nomura’s client relationships and analytics in Japan.

The firm hopes to extend the ModelEx platform to India, Taiwan and Korea by April 2009. In addition, Lehman’s LX crossing engine will be relaunched in Asia under the Nomura brand in the coming months.

The electronic trading services team will be led by Robert Laible, head of Nomura electronic trading services, Asia, formerly of Lehman Brothers.

“Nomura is committed to establishing a world-class suite of electronic trading products for its customers globally, and we’ve been very focused over the last few months on re-establishing a market-leading platform in Asia,” said Laible in a statement. “We are well-positioned to offer our long-only clients, hedge funds, pension funds, and other institutional investors value-added and customised trading solutions and execution services.”

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