Sungard extends buy-side suite in US, Europe

IT firm Sungard’s acquisition of trading technology company GL TRADE will give European buy-side firms better access to Sungard’s trading product suite and allow Sungard’s US buy-side clients to tap brokers in Europe and Asia.

A senior executive at Sungard’s Global Trading division, the unit formed from GL TRADE, told theTRADEnews.com that the firms’ integration would allow Sungard to expand its European buy-side client base by using GL TRADE’s European distribution for its trading products.

Yassine Brahim, segment president of Global Trading at Sungard, told a press conference in London yesterday that the acquisition, completed in November last year, will also enable Sungard’s US buy-side clients to broaden their investment horizons.

“The US buy-side community wants to move into Europe and Asia,” said Brahim. “GL TRADE is bringing a brokerage community that is very important to Sungard’s buy-side community.”

Users of Sungard’s existing trading tools, which include the Brass order management system and a range of market access tools, are predominantly used US buy-side firms, while GL TRADE’s client base is more heavily weighted to the sell-side in Europe and Asia. The acquisition will grant Sungard’s clients use of GL Net, an order routing and execution network of more than 300 brokers that provides direct market access to over 140 markets. Clients can also use brokers’ algorithms via GL Net.

EU: Final end-of-waste criteria report emerges

The European commission's joint research centre (JRC) has published its final recommendations on how to define when certain waste streams that have undergone recovery cease to be waste under EU law.

Under the recently revised EU waste framework directive, the European commission must assess the need for so-called end-of-waste criteria for several waste streams.

The JRC proposes a general methodology and principles for defining end-of-waste criteria at EU level. It says the criteria should cover the input waste material, the recovery processes used, the quality of the resulting product and its potential applications.

The report recommends quality control procedures to ensure criteria are met and suggests impact assessment guidelines for deciding whether such criteria should be set in the first place. The report includes case studies on setting end-of-waste criteria for compost, scrap metal and recyclable aggregates.

The commission is expected to publish its proposals for possible end-of-waste criteria by the end of this year.

MiFID benefits “an illusion”, despite price improvement

Instinet Europe’s chief executive has claimed that many of MiFID’s benefits “are illusory to the end-investor”, despite the agency broker reporting that it had achieved an average of 5.72 basis points of price improvement for clients in Q4 2008.

“We pass all price improvement back to our customers,” asserted Instinet Europe’s Richard Balarkas. “But there are a whole host of models on the sell-side. There seems to be little appreciation on the buy-side of the opportunity cost of using a broker that internalises a large percentage of flow, compared to one that opens up to as many external venues as possible,” he said.

Price improvement is generally defined as the difference between execution price and the best quoted price on the primary exchange at a given time. Instinet Europe data is based only on executions that remove liquidity from MTFs over the period in question.

Instinet Europe said it routed nearly 28% of its European equity trades away from primary exchanges by value traded in Q4 2008. The agency broker was among the first sell-side firms to connect to the multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) launched last year: BATS Europe, Nasdaq OMX Europe, Turquoise and dark pool NYFIX Euro Millennium. During 2008, the firm also executed the first trade on SWX’s Swiss Block dark pool, launched its own MTF, BlockMatch, and, along with Credit Suisse, became the first broker in Europe to offer reciprocal dark pool access. Instinet Europe executed 35.42% of its trades in French, German, Dutch and UK stocks on MTFs in the final quarter of 2008.

Dark trading doubles in US despite volatility - Rosenblatt

US dark pool trading more than doubled in 2008, according to an analysis by boutique agency brokerage Rosenblatt Securities.

The latest edition of ‘Let there be light’, the firm’s monthly dark liquidity tracker, noted that trading activity in 18 of the most significant US dark pools accounted 8.9% of December 2008’s total consolidated equity volume, up from 4.04% in January. A handful of dark pools operational in December, however, either had not launched or did not report their figures to Rosenblatt during January.

The report particularly noted the success of Level ATS, which saw a 115% increase in volumes through the year, Knight Link (up 107.6%), Credit Suisse Crossfinder (116.9%). Direct Edge (270.7%) and Getco Execution Services, which has become the fourth largest dark pool in terms of average daily volume, in the US since its launch on 19 March.

According to Rosenblatt, Direct Edge’s Enhanced Liquidity Provider (ELP) programme, which aggregates non-displayed orders from other dark pools, and new ROUD and ROUE dark order types, were a major driver for the platform’s growth.

EU: Final end-of-waste criteria report emerges

The European commission's joint research centre (JRC) has published its final recommendations on how to define when certain waste streams that have undergone recovery cease to be waste under EU law.

Under the recently revised EU waste framework directive, the European commission must assess the need for so-called end-of-waste criteria for several waste streams.

The JRC proposes a general methodology and principles for defining end-of-waste criteria at EU level. It says the criteria should cover the input waste material, the recovery processes used, the quality of the resulting product and its potential applications.

The report recommends quality control procedures to ensure criteria are met and suggests impact assessment guidelines for deciding whether such criteria should be set in the first place. The report includes case studies on setting end-of-waste criteria for compost, scrap metal and recyclable aggregates.

InfoReach TMS to be deployed in global markets by Marco Polo Network

InfoReach, a trading technology provider, is to have its InfoReach trade management system (TMS) distributed in the emerging markets by Marco Polo Network, an electronic trading platform.

The InfoReach TMS manages equities, futures, options and foreign exchange and combines order-entry, rule-based trading, order management, and FIX connectivity in a single broker-neutral trading platform. It also has basket trading, order routing, pre- and post-trade allocations, advanced algorithms and real-time position monitoring capabilities.

“Firms in emerging markets require advanced tools to help them navigate a rapidly changing global marketplace,” said Allen Zaydlin, CEO, InfoReach. “They need best execution via a scalable and flexible trading platform. This partnership with Marco Polo Network enables our trading technology to be used and deployed in these markets.”

Marco Polo Network will also use the full InfoReach product to develop its proprietary algorithms for Brazil, Mexico and other active markets. It has been branded Logita, and has already been deployed to two clients.

Brazilian broker breaks new ground with Apama

Software provider Progress Apama has predicted strengthening Brazilian demand for algorithmic trading solutions after unveiling its first client in the country, broker Ágora Corretora de Titulos e Valores Mobiliaro.

Giles Nelson, senior director of strategy at Apama, Progress Software’s complex event processing and algorithmic trading tools division, said both buy- and sell-side firms in Brazil are increasingly interested in using trading algorithms to facilitate their strategies.

“Algorithmic trading in Brazil is getting a lot of interest at the moment,” Nelson told theTRADEnews.com. “Brazil’s economy has been growing quite quickly, the market is quite liberal in nature and there is an increased amount of electronic trading generally. Because there is not much history of using technology for trading, it is easy for firms to adopt algorithmic trading technology without interfering with legacy systems. That combination of circumstances means it is a fairly hot market for us at the moment.”

This week, Apama announced that Ágora Corretora, a subsidiary of Banco Bradesco, had chosen Apama’s complex event processing (CEP) platform to support algorithmic trading in its equities operation.