Johnson Investment Counsel selects Rapid Addition FIX engine
Johnson Investment Counsel, a US-based wealth management firm, has selected financial technology company Rapid Addition and its RA-Cub FIX engine to automate the flow of trades between an internal order management system and the Triton execution management system, provided by agency broker and technology vendor, ITG.
The RA-Cub FIX engine, a messaging engine for the FIX protocol, is a service available to exchanges and multilateral trading facilities, sell and buy-side firms, transaction hubs and independent software vendors, in either .Net/C or Java versions.
Ross Lucas, head of sales at Rapid Addition, said, “Our product has also enabled straight-through processing access to multiple brokers, which avoids errors or delays in executing and reporting trades.”
Orc Software launches Market Maker
Technology provider Orc Group has launched its Orc Market Maker system in North America.
Market Maker can be provided as deployed software or as a managed service, and is designed to provide low-latency quoting and access to multiple markets using a single interface.
It includes features to assist volatility and pricing management, including a volatility model application programming interface, to allow development of proprietary models. Orc also provides pre-defined and configurable volatility models, as well as built-in pricing models for quoting and hedging.
Orc Market Maker uses a server-based engine and supports co-location at exchanges to minimise latency. It also supports options, warrants and structured products.
”We have developed Orc Market Maker to help market makers easily grow their businesses, and to adjust to the new competitive landscape requiring market makers to be active on multiple trading venues,” said Jesper Alfredsson, vice president product management at Orc.
Orc Market Maker will be introduced to customers in the EMEA and APAC regions later in 2011.
Tradeweb opens European repo market
Tradeweb Markets, the financial market operator, has launched a European repo marketplace. The electronic dealer-to-customer platform mirrors the existing voice and message-based trading process, but simplifies the post-trade complexities of collateral assignment and allocation.
Customers are able to request executable quotes from up to five dealers, which can be viewed in one place at one time, and negotiate rates and haircuts. A full audit trail of activity is provided, allowing for best execution reporting to the buy-side.
Tradeweb has nine liquidity providers either already live or in the process of technical implementation. Users can trade classic repo and reverse repo on tri-party, bilateral general collateral and bilateral specials on terms from overnight to one year, with forward start capability.
TradingScreen expands US trading team
Technology vendor and transaction cost analysis provider TradingScreen has appointed Arnold Roxas as head of fixed income business development and Tim Sullivan as a senior salesperson, both focused on traditional asset managers in North America.
They will report directly to Charles Garcia, head of global marketing for traditional asset managers and are based in TradingScreen’s New York headquarters.
Roxas was a co-founder of online trade execution service provider Moneyline where he held senior responsibilities in electronic trading, including managing the firm’s relationship with fixed income market operator MarketAxess. He previously ran product management for real estate investment company Beacon Capital and most recently worked with global private equity firm Warburg Pincus/Benchmark Capital on a fixed income trading platform.
Sullivan entered the trading sphere at investment bank Salomon Brothers in 1993, rising to become a vice president in equity derivatives and trading. Since then, he has worked in sales and trading roles at brokerage firms Pulse Trading and Ballista Securities, with more than a decade spent at agency broker ITG Trading where he held the role of director.
MarketPrizm hires Kirkup to Europe
Market data and trading infrastructure services provider MarketPrizm has appointed Tom Kirkup as client director for its European commercial team.
Kirkup has extensive international experience in the financial markets, with the majority of his career spent at Reuters in a number of front-line roles. These included global account, country and sales management, as well as commercial responsibility for one of the firm’s largest business lines. He has worked in London, New York, Tokyo and Frankfurt as well as other regions including the Gulf.
“Tom's extensive experience and deep knowledge of the needs of our customer base will enable us to support the increasing demand we see for MarketPrizm’s connectivity solutions,” said Tanuja Randery, CEO at MarketPrizm. “We have strong interest from both buy-side and sell-side clients across Europe and Tom’s appointment accelerates our ability to answer our clients’ needs.”