This Week: Symphony, Digital Asset/Nasdaq, State Street, Finos & more

Symphony acquires Cloud9 Technologies

Symphony has acquired the trader voice and electronic communication company Cloud9 Technologies. With this acquisition, Symphony aims to take the lead in front-office communications with new services and solutions combining trader voice with natural language processing and automation. The combined offering aims to accelerate trade flows, improve transactional accuracy, and extend back-office and remote work use-cases.

The acquisition of Cloud9 Technologies is expected to be the first of several acquisitions for Symphony. CEO Brad Levy has previously shared that Symphony would buy, partner with, or acquire strategic assets for the company and the industry.

Digital Asset and Nasdaq partner for Daml-driven apps on Marketplace Services Platform

Digital Asset has announced a new partnership with Nasdaq to enable Daml-driven applications on the Nasdaq Marketplace Services Platform.

Nasdaq and Digital Asset customers will be able to leverage applications built in Daml, a multi-party application platform, and connect them seamlessly into the Nasdaq Marketplace Services Platform. Daml also presents an opportunity for Nasdaq and its customers to build application logic in Daml to manage new types of assets, such as ESG certificates, real estate, and precious metals as part of Nasdaq’s Marketplace Services Platform, a DLT-agnostic offering aimed at providing its clients with the ability to manage the full lifecycle of digital assets.

Launched in 2020, the Nasdaq Marketplace Services Platform is a software-as-a-service platform for exchanging digital assets, services and information in the cloud. Built on top of the Nasdaq Financial Framework’s high-performance, low-latency foundation, the platform provides access to functionally-robust services covering the transaction lifecycle, including the issuance of assets and trading through pre-trade risk management, market surveillance and efficient digital settlement.

Digital Asset’s exchange client base includes the Australian Securities Exchange, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, Singapore Exchange, and most recently, Xpansiv, an ESG commodity trading platform, among others.

State Street to implement cloud-based machine-learning technology 

State Street has announced that it will implement cloud-based machine-learning technology to transform private markets processing and document management. Through State Street’s partnership with Canoe Intelligence, allocators and managers in the private markets sector will have an integrated experience with automated alternative investment workflows, reducing processing and delivery times.

Canoe’s open application programming interface will integrate with State Street’s technology ecosystem, creating a more cohesive client experience for the processing of all alternative investment data across clients’ complex portfolios.

Finos conducting inaugural survey on the state of open source

Finos and its research partners—Linux Foundation Research, Scott Logic, WIPRO, and GitHub—are conducting an inaugural survey on the state of open source adoption, contribution, and readiness in the financial services industry. The survey seeks to explore open source within the context of financial services organizations, including banks, asset managers, and hedge funds, but will be designed as a resource to be used by all financial services organizations.

The survey closes in early July and more information can be found here.

LMax joins Pyth Network 

LMax Group, an independent operator of institutional execution venues for FX and cryptocurrency trading, has announced that it has joined the Pyth Network, a decentralized financial market data distribution network. LMAX Group becomes the first major institutional exchange to join the network.

By joining Pyth, LMAX Group will directly publish its FX and cryptocurrency data to the network, supporting Pyth’s vision of distributing readily available, real-time, and verifiable data using blockchains.

CME integrates market data and order entry functionality into Bloomberg Terminal

Derivatives marketplace CME Group has announced that market data and order entry functionality for FX Link are now available on the Bloomberg Terminal to enable market participants to electronically access pricing, liquidity and trading for FX swaps in G5 currency pairs.

FX Link delivers a differentiated liquidity pool, supported by a diverse set of participants, including banks, non-bank liquidity providers, hedge funds and asset managers.

The integration with Bloomberg provides mutual clients with access to new FX futures contracts through Bloomberg’s ISV, Tradebook. It also strengthens FX Link’s position as a cleared and capital efficient central limit order book for FX swaps, which leverages existing OTC and futures workflows. Through the integration, a larger group of market participants are able to view and execute FX Link’s firm liquidity pool.