About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Vela Adds to Object Trading to Growing Portfolio of Managed Services Components

Subscribe to our newsletter

In another burst of corporate activity, Vela Trading Technologies has agreed to buy Object Trading, a provider of Direct Market Access (DMA), pre-trade risk, and analytical applications. The deal follows hot on the heels of Vela’s recent acquisition of OptionsCity and adds to Vela’s portfolio of high-performance trading and market data offerings.

In particular, Object Trading adds a fully managed DMA capability to Vela’s suite of managed services, an area the company has been focusing on since its relaunch as Vela a year ago. Vela rebranded in June 2016 after its predecessor – SR Labs – acquired several market data and trading technology assets from the former NYSE Technologies, itself built on a series of acquisitions including feedhandler developer Wombat Financial Software and Harco, developer of the DART entitlement management platform.

According to Vela, the addition of Object Trading and OptionsCity will allow it to offer clients “an end-to-end trading platform with global, multi-asset class coverage; high-performance, low-latency market access and market data; industry leading pre-trade risk controls; drop copy functionality; post-trade processing; trading analytics; plus, a front-end GUI for price discovery, workflow management, and order entry.”

The latest addition, says Jennifer Nayar, CEO of Vela, “will accelerate our market access Platform-as-a-Service strategy with additional pre-trade risk and analytics functionality

The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in early third quarter. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP served as Vela’s legal advisors in the transaction. Goldenhill International M&A Advisors served as Object Trading’s strategic advisors; and PwC acted as Object Trading’s legal and financial advisors.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Unlocking value: Harnessing modern data platforms for data integration, advanced investment analytics, visualisation and reporting

Modern data platforms are bringing efficiencies, scalability and powerful new capabilities to institutions and their data pipelines. They are enabling the use of new automation and analytical technologies that are also helping firms to derive more value from their data and reduce costs. Use cases of specific importance to the finance sector, such as data...

BLOG

AI Personalization in Trading: Where We Are and Where We’re Heading

Ivan Kunyankin, Data Science Team Lead at Devexperts. AI may have started out its brokerage career in back-office, enhancing operational efficiency by providing human teams with actionable client insights, but it’s now being promoted to more sensitive client-facing roles. As AI tools continue to evolve and become normalized in more areas of daily life, financial...

EVENT

AI in Capital Markets Summit London

Now in its 3rd year, the AI in Capital Markets Summit returns with a focus on the practicalities of onboarding AI enterprise wide for business value creation. Whilst AI offers huge potential to revolutionise capital markets operations many are struggling to move beyond pilot phase to generate substantial value from AI.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...