By Uri Inspector, Staff Reporter
High-performance Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider Beeks Financial Cloud has added cross-connect capability to the London Metal Exchange (LME). The facility – implemented at Interxion’s LON-1 data centre in Brick Lane in London, home to LME’s primary matching engine since May 2017 – will allow collocated Beeks clients to trade electronically on the LME.
The addition of LME to Beeks’ infrastructure adds options and futures on base and other metals to the FX, futures, equities, fixed income securities and cryptocurrencies already accessible by traders via more than 100 other trading venues, including banks, brokers, exchanges and alternative trading systems.
Launched in New Jersey in 2011, but now based just outside Glasgow, Scotland, Beeks Financial Cloud provides technology and broker-neutral connectivity to key liquidity venues within major data centres. Beeks offers subscription-based access to its technology and connectivity facilities.
The company recently named Des Peck as commercial director, based in London. Peck has a strong background in managed financial infrastructure and extranet services. He was most recently business development manager at managed trading infrastructure provider Object Technologies, and before that spent more than five years at TMX Atrium, before it was spun off to InterContinental Exchange (ICE).
The LME connection is the latest in a series of additions of liquidity sources. March marked Beeks’ entrance into the cryptocurrency market by connection to Gemini Exchange, a New York digital asset exchange. In April, Beeks added US equities coverage from the IEX in New York. Other recently added venues include Barclays and UBS. The firm describes itself as “constantly expanding” its connectivity range.
According Beeks CEO Gordon McArthur, “Connection to the London Metal Exchange has been driven by demand from our clients looking to participate in the base and other metals futures and options markets.”
Joanne Mills, marketing executive at Beeks Financial Cloud, says the company offers compute power as a dedicated service, resulting in reduced compute cost combined with low-latency connectivity and lower operational support overheads.
Offering clients a monthly subscription with a 30-day-trial, Beeks focuses on reducing barriers to entry and time to market for institutional clients. VPS server packages range from £27 to £85 per month, while dedicated server packages range from £195 to £3,000 per month, depending on the server’s configuration. Connectivity is usually £75 for a cross-connect to a financial venue.
Mills says that client demand for the metals futures and options markets has been driven by trading opportunities: “As the cost of deployment of compute power has reduced the cost to develop and deploy multi-location trading approaches, so it has been easier for clients to deploy into data centres and then get their engines trading into those F&O markets. Beeks provides the utility service (compute power) and the client can then directly access the market or work with a technology provider to access the market, for example, where pre-trade risk controls are mandated.”
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