Electronic Trading Newsflashes

3 June 2004

The Bond Exchange of South Africa (BESA) went live with its new BTB Trade Capture system using the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) as a standard for the fixed-income market. BESA selected the Cameron Systems Cameron FIX Engine for implementing the protocol. The Bond Exchange, an independent financial exchange responsible for regulating the debt securities-market in South Africa, contracted with Peresys, Cameron's South-African-based support partner in the region to develop the new system. The project required Peresys to develop two separate systems integrated into a single system for members of the Bond Traders Association. The BTB Trade Capture and BTA Prices Discovery system replace BESA's Bond Automated Trading System (BATS). The Price Discovery system, an integrated component of the Trade Capture system, also uses the FIX protocol to receive and communicate price information. The BTB Trade Capture system went live in mid-May following an extensive testing program that was completed in March 2004. The BTA Prices Discovery is slated to go live in August. The system is a first for the South African bond market and will provide central price-discovery for all market participants which to date, has been fragmented. The Cameron FIX Engine manages all connection and application services to both the local and disaster recovery site for the BTB Trade Capture system. FIX version 4.3 messages and tags were supplemented with addition from FIX 4.4, which supports fixed income.

NeoNet, the independent agency broker for professional investors based in Stockholm, added Bolsa de Madrid (Madrid Stock Exchange) to its portfolio of exchange connections. The addition was in response to client's demanding access to Spanish stocks, says NeoNet. "Through the addition of Madrid we have further expanded our clients' possibility to trade cross-border and we can offer trading in all shares that make up the DJ EURO STOXX 50 and DJ STOXX 50 indexes," states Simon Nathanson, NeoNet's chief executive officer in the release. Clients can also trade through the firm's other international-exchange memberships on: Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Milan, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm and Virt-x. In the United States, trading is offered on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Clients can either use electronic direct-market access or send orders to be worked on NeoNet's international trading desks in Stockholm and New York.

John Petschauer joined Micro Design Services, (MDS) LLC, as chief executive officer. Petschauer was formerly chief technology officer at The Griswold Company, a direct-access brokerage firm, which maintains an operation on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). He previously held senior positions with SIAC and FixChange, which was part of Javelin/NYFIX. "John is a great addition to our team as we expand beyond traditional floor-based technology. We are bringing his leadership in equities trading to help bolster our presence on both the upstairs trading desk and at the point of sale," states Roman Syzmansky, MDS' president in the release. Based in Parsippany, N.J., MDS is a software company that develops equity, options and futures order-routing and management systems, price reporting systems, hand-held broker terminals and wireless systems. It's been developing systems for securities and commodities exchanges as well as for many brokerage firms for over 14 years.

Source: Wall Street and Technology Online