This Week: Cboe-Neo, Aviva-Macrobond, Iress, BNY Mellon, Options, MT Newswires-Bloomberg, and more

Cboe snaps up Neo operator Aequitas Innovations 

Cboe Global Markets has agreed to buy Aequitas Innovations, operator of Canadian equities market Neo Exchange, for an undisclosed sum, to expand its trading offering in Canadian securities. Neo, founded in 2015, operates three market models—Neo-L, a make-take model; Neo-N, an inverted model; and Neo-D, a dark pool—as well as Neo Connect, a platform for trading unlisted securities. Following the acquisition of Canadian ATS MatchNow last year, Cboe will have a 16.5% market share in Canadian equities, and will now be able to offer two equities trading platforms in Canada, which it says will “drive more trading activity on Cboe markets and improve efficiencies and opportunities for investors and capital-raisers in both Canada and the US.” The deal is expected to close in the first half of next year, and Cboe says the price is “not material from a financial perspective.”

Aviva enlists Macrobond for ‘Viewer’ info-sharing platform

Aviva Investors, the global asset management division of UK insurance and pensions company Aviva, has begun using a new tool to share information across its business lines, developed by Swedish data company Macrobond Financial in response to Aviva’s request. The tool, dubbed Macrobond Viewer, allows Aviva’s economists and portfolio managers to share live data and charts, creating a “single source of truth” for the firm’s research and analysis operations, ensuring that all users are seeing the same data at any given moment, and guarding against loss of version control and compound inefficiencies. Officials say Macrobond Viewer has already proved “particularly valuable” to portfolio managers monitoring key positions.

After 2.5-year QuantHouse integration, Iress launches API business line

Trading technology and market data provider Iress has unveiled its API Data and Trading Solutions business, which combines the vendor’s May 2019 acquisition of French low-latency data and trading infrastructure solutions provider QuantHouse with its existing data and trading business. Officials say the new unit will allow clients to take advantage of increased demand for API- and cloud-delivered data. The division offers market data feed APIs, including the QuantFeed low-latency data platform, data products such as on-demand historical data, reference data and analytics, and managed hosting and connectivity solutions.

BNY Mellon lets clients apply ESG rules to collateral assets

The new ESG Data Analytics suite developed by BNY Mellon will allow market participants to apply their chosen environmental, social and governance (ESG) principals not only to their investment strategies, but to assets they accept as collateral. Clients of BNY Mellon’s Rule electronic collateral schedule manager can now apply their ESG preferences to collateral based on MSCI ESG ratings available via the custodian’s ESG Data Analytics, allowing financial firms to only accept assets as collateral that they deem to be in line with their ESG goals. Future versions of ESG Data Analytics will expand beyond just MSCI’s ESG ratings as inputs, and will allow clients to make more detailed determinations.

Options, Code Willing ally for quant data IT

Belfast, Northern Ireland-based financial infrastructure technology vendor Options has partnered with Code Willing, a financial data management solutions provider located in Baton Rouge, La., to offer a new service that will help mutual clients among quantitative trading firms control and lower their data analysis costs. The combined solution automatically directs compute jobs to the most-performant environment based on spare capacity, while providing a budgeting overlay to help clients optimize their Options Cloud utilization. Officials say the Code Willing technology will play a “key role” in other solutions being developed by Options to expand its ecosystem.

Corlytics bows FinCrime tracker to help firms manage surge of regulation

To help financial firms manage their compliance with growing regulatory burdens, Dublin-based Corlytics has released a new cloud-based FinCrime tracker that provides a single view of upcoming financial crime regulations around the world. According to Corlytics, regulatory changes in the areas of anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing have risen by one-third so far in 2021 compared to last year. The new solution provides aggregated dashboards and analytics covering financial crime legislation and sub-themes such as fraud, AML, anti-bribery and corruption, tax evasion, cyber crime, and other areas, enabling compliance departments in financial firms to identify new and changing regulations and assess their impact faster, while reducing complexity and friction of dealing with notices and updates.

Confluence: A Revolution needs a ’Hero

Luxembourg-based fund service company FundHero has signed a multi-year agreement with investment management technology provider Confluence to create a managed services offering that is compliant with the Ucits and Alternative Investment Fund frameworks, based on its own technology combined with Confluence’s cloud-based Revolution risk and portfolio analytics platform. Officials say the combination allows clients in Luxembourg and Germany to outsource their regulatory risk reporting needs.

MT Newswires adds Bloomberg video to news feed

Bethesda, Md.-based news provider MT Newswires has struck a deal with data giant Bloomberg to incorporate video segments from Bloomberg Television into its Live Briefs Pro global feeds of breaking news and commentary. The video clips will feature interviews with CEOs and analysts, and clips from trading floors worldwide, accompanied by text news alerts, and will cover a wide range of global companies and topics, including equities; fixed income; commodities and currency markets; global economics; and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, among other areas.

FactSet launches TMT ‘deep sector’ data

FactSet Research Systems has launched an initial dataset of “deep sector” content on the Technology, Media and Telecoms (TMT) industry segments, which officials say will help clients make smarter investment decisions in industries undergoing “tectonic shifts.” The datasets cover areas such as TV ratings, movie box office data, advertising spending, and media asset ownership, collected from sources including Insider Intelligence, Nash Information Services, Nielsen, and Variety Business Intelligence. The vendor says it will add more data to the TMT dataset over the coming months.

Gmex debuts MultiHub post-trade digital clearing platform

Gmex, a provider of trading and post-trade infrastructure for exchanges and digital asset marketplaces, has launched Gmex MultiHub, a cloud-based digital markets infrastructure platform for third-party trading and post-trade services that allows capital markets participants to access regulated digital assets. Developed in partnership with Amazon Web Services and Luxoft, the analytics and engineering arm of DXC Technology, MultiHub provides turnkey digital exchange, custody and governance solutions, including credit allocation and checking, collateral management and margin trading, order routing, netting and settlement across multiple trading venues, custodians and participants. Officials say the platform addresses fragmentation of markets and standards, and provides a fast, safe clearing and settlement for hybrid digital and traditional trading.