This Week: Symphony, Nasdaq, Interactive Brokers, Finos, MSCI, and more

Symphony buys StreetLinx directory platform

Financial collaboration platform vendor Symphony Communication Services has made another acquisition—counterparty mapping platform provider StreetLinx, which will expand the number of institutional counterparties in Symphony’s directory from 1,000 to 1,200.

StreetLinx was founded in 2017 by two former Goldman Sachs salespeople, Gary Godshaw and Patrick Keneally, and has created a directory of verified professionals, including portfolio managers, traders, research analysts and salespeople. Integrating the vendors’ platforms will enable directory information, entitlement-based connections, and content distribution across trusted counterparties.

Nasdaq acquires minority stake in Level ATS

Nasdaq has acquired an undisclosed but “significant” minority stake in US equities dark pool operator Level ATS, joining existing investors that include Bank of America, Citi, and Fidelity.

Launched in 2006, Level ATS provides a continuous crossing platform that delivers seamless trading while minimizing information leakage and market impact. Most recently, Level ATS launched three proprietary volume weighted average price order types: VWap Block, VWap Slice, and VWap Full Day.

Interactive Brokers puts Wall Street Horizon data on workstation

Clients of Interactive Brokers’ Trader Workstation can now access events data from Wall Street Horizon covering more than 40 event types via the broker’s API, ranging from earnings and dividend dates to investor conferences. Equities and options traders use the data to capitalize on or avoid risk relating to event-related volatility in an equity or its related options. The data includes access to Wall Street Horizon’s DateBreaks 3.0 dataset of earnings date revisions and reschedules that can indicate corporate behavior and potential volatility.

Bradesco BAC taps Genesis for ‘bank in a box’ apps

Brazilian banking group Banco Bradesco has enlisted “low-code no-code” platform provider Genesis Global to build a “bank in a box” for its BAC Florida Bank subsidiary, to enable the bank to deliver modern, compliant and secure financial tools to help it win new clients and accelerate its expansion plans. Officials say using Genesis’ Low-Code No-Code Platform to design applications in-house and also to leverage the suite of enterprise-ready solutions in the Genesis Application Library will deliver “a multitude of applications” across its organization—including for wealth management, treasury, trading, post-trade and compliance functions—and digitize manual workflows, resulting in better efficiency, lower costs, and higher returns for clients.

Finos signs new members to drive open-source adoption

Finos (the Fintech Open Source Foundation) has signed up five new members, including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, CloudLinux, Digital Asset, Egar Global, and the Canadian RegTech Association. Officials say the new members will help to increase greater adoption of open-source strategies across the capital markets. Officials from the new members cited open-source code’s potential to drive innovation, accelerate time to market, automate routine workflows and free up resources to focus on value-adding initiatives, and to promote greater coordination and standardization in regulatory processes.

MSCI buys real estate data company for almost $1bn

Index and analytics provider MSCI has struck a deal to buy Real Capital Analytics, a provider of data and analytics for the real estate capital markets, for $950 million in cash. The deal is expected to close at the end of Q3 or early Q4 this year. Officials say Real Capital Analytics’ database of more than $20 trillion worth of commercial property transactions linked to more than 200,000 investor and lender profiles will enable MSCI to expand its suite of real estate solutions and provide data, analytics and tools to help investors manage their investments and understand performance and risk in their portfolios, and will “bridge the information gap between commercial real estate and other asset classes across the financial markets.”

Alerian buys ETF data websites ETF Trends, ETF Database

Index provider Alerian has acquired ETF Trends and ETF Database, two brands operated by ETF Flows that provide data, news and research on the exchange-traded funds market. Officials say the deal will allow the company to bolster its information and index creation services, and is the latest step in Alerian’s growth strategy to offer a “comprehensive” suite of index, research and data solutions for clients. As a result of the deal, ETF Flows co-founders Tom Hendrickson and Tom Lydon will become part-owners of the combined business, and will join Alerian’s board.

OptionMetrics updates Canadian options database

New York-based options and analytics database provider OptionMetrics has released version 3.0 of its IvyDB Canada database of historical prices, implied volatility and sensitivity data on Canadian indexes and equity options. Upgrades in the new version include an extended volatility surface, including an additional 10 days and more delta values, which enables better assessments of implied volatility and options pricing for shorter- and longer-term strategies, and a forward price table to calculate future discounted option values at different maturities with anticipated delivery prices of underlying assets. The vendor says the timing of the release corresponds to increased interest in Canadian options trading, with average daily option trading volume for the period between January and June this year showing a 24% increase over the same period in 2020.