This Week: Competition ramps up for EU equities tape, Tradeweb-Euroclear-IGM partnership, Nasdaq, and more

Group of European firms joins race for equities CT

A group of banks and asset managers including Barclays, Credit Agricole, Societe Generale, UniCredit, and BlackRock has backed the European Parliament’s proposal for an equities consolidated tape (CT) and will explore bidding to operate the tape. A report previously commissioned by the group said that including only post-trade data could jeopardize the business case for a CT, and called for a pre-and post-trade tape. Click here for more information about Europe’s plans for a CT.

Tradeweb, Euroclear, IGM team up on Eurobond identification

Tradeweb, Euroclear and Informa Global Markets (IGM) have announced a collaboration to automate the security identification and setup process for syndicated Eurobonds in the primary market. The companies aim to improve investors’ access to pre-pricing data for newly-syndicated Eurobonds.

Many newly-issued Eurobonds enter the market without key information, such as security identifiers and important deal data, hindering market participants from satisfying data requirements to book trades in these securities, and leaving buy-side investors to find manual workarounds and risk incorrect orders or allocations.

Through the Euroclear and IGM data solutions, the information describing the new issue will become available on Tradeweb in real time as each new Eurobond is marketed and priced. Participants will be able to consume the collated data via Tradeweb, allowing them to automatically set up their new issue securities.

Nasdaq upgrades risk platform

Nasdaq has made enhancements to its risk technology platform for banks and broker-dealers, to help firms navigate extreme market conditions by providing a live view of risk across proprietary and client trading portfolios.

The latest version of the Nasdaq Risk Platform adds fixed income securities, including government bonds, corporate bonds and convertible bonds to offer users a consolidated view of risk across a range of asset classes. It also enhances multi-factor and intraday stress testing tools, which can isolate and manage specific risks within large and complex scenario sets.

Optima Partners and H20.ai collaborate on machine learning

Optima Partners will work with AI company H2O.ai to build resources for financial services organizations. The joint projects will focus on applying advanced machine learning within credit risk and strong fraud defenses.

Liquidnet adds new liquidity-seeking alerts on equities trading application

Liquidnet will integrate new alerts to its equities trading application, informing traders of liquidity events created by dark blocks and enabling them to re-engage on missed opportunities to trade.

Sterling Trading Tech launches calculation service for enhanced portfolio margin reporting requirements

Sterling Trading Tech has released a calculation service for member firms of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) in response to an increase in the regulator’s portfolio margining requirements.

The new service calculates and produces the data elements required for the additional reporting, including concentration position requirements and global margin supplement details. The portfolio margin reporting enhancements announced by FINRA are meant to provide more insight into the options and concentrated position exposure of member firms’ client accounts.

News from the previous week:

Aquis rolls out “world’s first” regulated market grade 24/7 exchange

The technology division of exchange operator Aquis Exchange has unveiled a regulated market grade matching engine which never requires shut down or downtime, according to a press release from the company.

Exchanges typically need scheduled periods of downtime for maintenance, software upgrades, and sequence number resets. Aquis Equinox “can guarantee continuous operation,” with no downtime needed for maintenance or infrastructure changes, according to the press release.

The matching engine is run on a shared ecosystem capable of hosting multiple exchanges. In the event of errors, it is designed to automatically fail over to a backup service. This also eliminates split-brain distributed computing problems (when distributed computing systems can’t automatically identify the primary system), the company says.

UBS executes first cross-border intraday repo trade on Broadridge distributed ledger platform

UBS and an undisclosed Asian bank have successfully executed the first cross-border intraday repurchase agreement (repo) transaction on Broadridge’s Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform. Intraday repos help financial institutions to manage their liquidity and reduce operational risk.

Broadridge says that its blockchain-enabled platform makes intraday trades possible by increasing settlement velocity and collateral mobility.

Northern Trust launches Market Risk Monitor in partnership with Confluence

Northern Trust has released Market Risk Monitor, providing ex-ante (forward-looking) risk analytics services. The monitor creates risk indicators including stress tests, sensitivity shocks, and value-at-risk (VAR) measures for institutional investors.

The new product uses Confluence Technologies’ RiskAPI tool to help determine the market risk profile of clients’ assets and liabilities. The API enables Market Risk Monitor to deliver risk analytics from vendors as well as proprietary data. The introduction of the new tool means that clients accessing performance risk, compliance, and ESG analytics can now do so in one place via Radar, Northern Trust’s digital dashboard.

BMLL expands data coverage to Apac

Data and analytics provider BMLL has announced that it will expand its data coverage to include equities and ETF data from some Asian exchanges. Data from Cboe Japan, Japannext and the Singapore Exchange will be added to existing data from the Tokyo Stock Exchange in the first phase of BMLL’s Asia-Pacific coverage expansion.

Old Mutual Multi-Managers converts to cloud-based Confluence analytics product

Old Mutual Multi-Managers has completed the move to Confluence’s cloud-based Revolution Performance product for performance and attribution reporting, according to a press release published by Confluence.

Old Mutual Multi-Managers, a member of Old Mutual Group, is a longstanding user of Confluence’s technology. It has used Seven, Confluence’s legacy performance and analytics platform, as well as Confluence Data Management (CDM). The conversion to Revolution Performance is intended to increase the efficiency of performance measurement, risk analytics, and attribution efficiency, according to the press release.

Fourthline raises €50m for regtech solutions

Regtech company Fourthline has raised €50m from Finch Capital alongside other investors. Fourthline launched in 2018, and provides banks and financial institutions with tech tools for KYC, AML, and GDPR processes.

Stock Exchange of Thailand taps DataBP for data admin platform

Data licensing management platform DataBP will partner with the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) to streamline market data administration and reporting, according to an announcement on DataBP’s website.