This Week: Clear Street, Hudson River Trading/Google Cloud, Alveo and more

Clear Street to acquire Fox River Algorithmic Trading from Instinet

Cloud-based financial technology firm Clear Street will acquire Fox River Algorithmic Trading from Instinet. Fox River provides algorithmic execution solutions in US and Canadian equities. The offerings cater to buy-side and sell-side firms, including a number of quant-driven funds.

Clear Street COO Andrew Volz says acquiring Fox River was an easy decision after Instinet approached Clear Street earlier this year about a potential sale. Clear Street, Volz says, had looked into buying Fox River several years ago before Instinet bought it in June 2022.

Volz notes that there are few independent algo providers available to buy. He says the acquisition was “additive” and “opportunistic.”

Clear Street Investment Banking advised Clear Street on the transaction, which is expected to close in Q3 2024, pending closing conditions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Clear Street’s previous major acquisitions include active trading firm Centerpoint and Volz says the Fox River acquisition fits in well with Centerpoint. “Those traders trade a lot of volume. Having our own customizable, high-performance proprietary algo platform will benefit that business,” Volz says.

Fox River will be integrated into Clear Street’s existing operations and will complement its cloud-based prime brokerage platform and electronic trading capabilities.

For Instinet’s part, Gerry Milligan, Instinet president and Americas head, says the deal “allows Instinet to streamline our existing Execution Services offering and continue to concentrate our investment efforts on our core algorithmic platform. Additionally, we believe that the Fox River platform will be a great complement to Clear Street’s product suite.” 

Hudson River Trading taps Google Cloud

Google Cloud partnered with quantitative trading firm Hudson River Trading (HRT) to accelerate the development of HRT’s automated trading models. Google Cloud is providing HRT with high-performance computing infrastructure, including AI chips such as Nvidia GPUs, to run research and trading simulations at scale.

Using Google Cloud’s infrastructure, HRT’s quant researchers are no longer limited to on-premises assets. According to the release, researchers can now test strategies faster and more cost-effectively.

Google Cloud’s Dynamic Workload Scheduler product and Spot Virtual Machines are being used in the partnership to increase access to GPUs. The Dynamic Workload Scheduler intelligently allocates AI chips based on demand to capitalize on compute capacity. Spot Preemptible allows HRT to capitalize on unused Google Cloud capacity.

Alveo merges with Gresham

Cloud-based market data management software Alveo completed its merger with Gresham Technologies. The combined companies will offer automation of data, post-trade processes, and external reporting.

Both companies specialize in data management software. The new business will take the Gresham name, and the CEO of Alveo will become chair of the board. 

CJC, DRDM team up on DLT market data contracts 

Crown Jewels Consultants (CJC), a market data services and commercial management provider, partnered with Digital Rights for Data Management (DRDM), a provider of distributed-ledger technology (DLT) that turns static data contracts into manageable assets in real time. 

The solution replaces paper market data contracts and protects the data publisher’s rights and revenue while reducing the data subscriber’s required resources.

Gleif partners with digital finance organization

Global Digital Finance (GDF), a members’ association for digital assets in finance, partnered with the Global LEI Foundation (Gleif), the organization in charge of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) and verifiable LEI (vLEI). The partnership will prioritize standards for digital assets in finance.

GDF and GLEIF have collaborated with others in the digital finance space.

Marex opens New Zealand office, expands carbon offering

Marex Group, a diversified financial services platform, opened an office in New Zealand in a bid to expand both its presence in Asia-Pacific and its environmental and carbon offering.

Marex will launch a customer-focused carbon trading platform, Neon Carbon, for domestic compliance credits.

The team, led by Nigel Brunel, will serve New Zealand-based and global clients with agency, execution, and clearing services across carbon, electricity and dairy, in listed and over-the-counter (OTC) products. 

Haruko grows presence in Southeast Asia

Fintech and digital asset investment management platform Haruko expanded into Southeast Asia after a $6 million funding round.

Haruko helps traditional institutional fund managers access digital assets. After growing in Europe and the US, it has opened an office in Singapore. The move is in response to demand for an institutional platform for digital assets.

Newly launched Abaxx Exchange taps CQG

Technology vendor CQG has partnered with Abaxx Exchange to provide access to benchmark futures on energy, metals and other energy transition-focused commodities trading on Abaxx. 

Abaxx, a new commodity futures exchange and clearinghouse based in Singapore, launched on June 28 with five futures contracts in liquified natural gas (LNG) and carbon markets.

Abaxx Exchange to use Ion XTP

In other Abaxx Exchange news, the exchange will use Ion’s XTP technology for post-trade clearing and risk solutions. The partnership helps exchange clearing members to source trades via the Abaxx Clearinghouse API and perform clearing, settlement, risk management, and reporting on one platform.

Liquidnet partners with genAI start-up Boltzbit

Agency broker Liquidnet has partnered with generative AI start-up Boltzbit on its fixed-income primary markets workflow.

Using Boltzbit’s AI machine learning solutions, Liquidnet will receive, process, and display newly announced bond deals at a faster rate. Bonds are more readily available now through Liquidnet’s deal announcement dashboard and new issue order book.

ExeQution Analytics teams up with Data Intellect

Trading analytics vendor ExeQution Analytics has partnered with Data Intellect, a data and technology consultancy. ExeQution Analytics provides consultancy services and software to help institutions monetize their data. Data Intellect offers data solutions, consulting services and managed services.