Japanese financial services firm Nomura will launch an electronic trading platform in Europe early next year, after finally laying out its plans for Lehman Brothers’ European execution business.
“Nomura has secured all the technology required to launch the European electronic trading platform previously used by Lehman Brothers, including the algorithmic engines, analytics and all connectivity infrastructure,” a spokesperson from Nomura confirmed to theTRADEnews.com. “Nomura will launch its electronic trading platform in early 2009, offering a new advanced product that will respond to client demands.”
Nomura bought Lehman’s European equity and investment banking arms, as well as its Asia-Pacific franchise, in the week following the US investment bank’s collapse on 15 September. The majority of Lehman’s US assets were acquired by Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of UK bank Barclays. Nomura’s acquisition of Lehman’s European assets includes the investment banking and equities businesses of the Lehman’s offices in the Netherlands, Qatar, Dubai, Kuwait, the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany and Sweden.
The spokesperson added that Nomura has retained “more than 95%” of the senior European management team responsible for Lehman’s electronic trading platform as well as securing related product teams.
“Nomura recently secured the equity analytics team, who previously operated WebBench (Lehman’s equity analytics solution), as well as the majority of the quant developers and technology teams associated with this and other product lines,” said the spokesperson. “The focus over the last few months has been to continue development of this market leading platform and ensure Nomura is well positioned to deliver a differentiated offering to its clients.”
Nomura, which also owns global agency brokerage Instinet, declined to comment on the pursuit of synergies between Instinet Europe and Nomura’s new European electronic trading business.