Eurex Enhances Market Access Following German Legislative Reform

The German Financial Centre Promotion Act has introduced a refined regulatory framework intended to simplify how non-EU firms participate in the European derivatives market. Effective immediately, third-country Regulatory Market-Makers (RMMs) are no longer required to establish a physical entity in Germany or seek individual exemptions to provide liquidity. This legislative shift removes a primary operational and financial hurdle, streamlining the onboarding process for international firms.

By reducing bureaucracy and lowering entry barriers, the reform aims to boost international participation and increase liquidity on German-regulated exchanges like Eurex. The change aligns Germany with other major European jurisdictions, ensuring a level playing field for global participants. Eurex, part of the Deutsche Börse Group, is now actively engaging with firms across the UK, Switzerland, North America, and Asia to facilitate their transition under this new framework.

This enhancement forms part of a broader strategy to strengthen Germany’s status as a global financial hub. It complements Eurex’s existing initiatives, such as its Sponsored Access model and liquidity provider programmes, to foster a more efficient and competitive trading environment.

Broadridge’s Distributed Ledger Repo Platform Records $7.3 Trillion in Monthly Volume

Broadridge Financial Solutions has reported a significant surge in activity on its Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform, processing a daily average of $365 billion in transactions throughout January 2026. Total monthly volumes reached $7.3 trillion, representing a 508% year-over-year increase compared to January 2025. This growth highlights the accelerating institutional adoption of tokenised real-asset settlement and the platform’s ability to sustain large-scale momentum.

The platform is expanding beyond foundational workflows into more complex institutional applications, such as sponsored and intraday repo. These advancements facilitate the efficient movement of high-quality collateral and allow for greater precision in liquidity management. By providing these tools, the platform helps firms reduce financing costs and improve overall liquidity within the securities lending market.

In 2026, Broadridge intends to further scale the DLR platform by focusing on intraday funding and enhanced collateral mobility across a broader range of tokenised asset classes. The firm aims to bridge the gap between traditional and digital financial ecosystems while ensuring the interoperability and resilience necessary for global capital markets.

LSEG to Launch Digital Securities Depository for On-Chain Settlement

London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has announced plans to develop the LSEG Digital Securities Depository (DSD), an on-chain settlement capability designed for institutional market participants. Scheduled for a 2026 launch subject to regulatory approval, the DSD will function as a fully interoperable infrastructure. It aims to bridge traditional and digital markets by supporting multiple blockchains and ensuring seamless interaction between existing settlement platforms and new digital frameworks.

The DSD will build upon LSEG’s existing Digital Markets Infrastructure (DMI), a Microsoft Azure-powered platform currently used for fund tokenisation. The new capability is intended to enhance collateral management and improve liquidity access across various asset classes, including equities, fixed income, and private markets. This move aligns with LSEG’s long-term vision of a financial ecosystem where the majority of securities are tokenised to increase transparency and operational efficiency.

To support the transition, LSEG is establishing a strategic partner group to integrate market feedback into the development process. This collaboration seeks to scale the infrastructure and facilitate the trading and settlement of both digitally native assets and digital representations of traditional securities. Members of this partnership group will be confirmed at a later date.

Deutsche Börse Group to Acquire Remaining 20% Stake in ISS STOXX

Deutsche Börse Group has reached an agreement to acquire the remaining 20% minority stake in ISS STOXX from the global investor General Atlantic. This transaction marks the final step in a strategic partnership that began with the acquisition of Axioma in 2019 and the subsequent integration of ISS’s ESG solutions with the STOXX index business in 2023. By moving to full ownership, Deutsche Börse aims to simplify its growth strategy and enhance market connectivity for its data, analytics, and index offerings.

The total purchase price of approximately €1.1 billion is based on a pre-agreed valuation of roughly 20 times the adjusted EBITDA of ISS STOXX. The payment will be structured in two tranches, with €731 million due in February 2026 and the balance payable in March 2026. Deutsche Börse intends to fund the buyout using existing cash and debt financing. Despite the significant investment, the group expects to maintain its AA- long-term credit rating and anticipates a low single-digit increase in cash earnings per share during the first year of full ownership.

General Atlantic’s exit is expected to be finalised by the end of March 2026, fulfilling a dual-track agreement that allowed for a private sale in the absence of an IPO. To maintain market integrity, Deutsche Börse has confirmed that ISS’s research and advisory services will continue to function under existing non-interference policies. This acquisition reinforces the Group’s focus on providing mission-critical tools for the buy-side while ensuring operational agility across its premier data brands.

SOLVE Launches AI-Powered Confidence Score for Corporate Bond Pricing

SOLVE, the provider of fixed income market data, has introduced Confidence Score for Corporate Bonds to its SOLVE Px™ platform. This AI-driven metric quantifies pricing uncertainty on a scale of 1 to 10, providing a transparent layer to predictive pricing for over 250,000 investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds. The tool translates complex model uncertainty into an intuitive framework, allowing professionals to assess the reliability of predicted prices for Bid, Mid, and Offer valuations.

The metric categorises scores into low, medium, and high confidence levels, which are colour-coded within the SOLVE Quotes Web application for rapid assessment. Higher scores typically reflect bonds with recent trading activity and active quoting, while lower scores indicate less liquid securities. Crucially, the tool covers the entire corporate bond universe, including highly illiquid assets and trades of all sizes, enabling risk management and trading teams to make more defensible, data-backed decisions.

Confidence Score is now integrated across all SOLVE Px delivery methods, including API endpoints, Excel add-ins, and FIX feeds. This launch follows the previous rollout of similar tools for municipal bonds and marks a further step in the company’s expansion of predictive pricing capabilities. By pairing price predictions with measurable uncertainty indicators, the service aims to reduce ambiguity and improve workflow efficiency across the fixed income markets.

Trading Technologies and Enmacc Partner to Integrate OTC and Exchange-Traded Energy Markets

Trading Technologies International (TT) has entered into an agreement with Enmacc GmbH, the market venue for OTC trading of energy and environmental commodities, to integrate their respective platforms, creating a unified execution environment for energy traders. This collaboration bridges the gap between over-the-counter (OTC) bilateral trading and listed derivatives, allowing mutual clients to manage both workflows through a single, streamlined interface.

The partnership combines TT’s global access to exchange-traded energy markets and spot venues with Enmacc’s extensive network and Request for Quote (RFQ) capabilities. By linking Enmacc’s ‘alpha’ agentic trading technology with TT’s execution suite, market participants can instantly distribute liquidity and manage bilateral credit risk. This integration aims to eliminate fragmented workflows and provide a more efficient experience across European energy and power markets.

Bloomberg Enhances ETF Shares’ Operational Efficiency with BSKT Integration

Bloomberg has announced that Australian issuer ETF Shares has adopted BSKT, an automated tool designed to streamline ETF creation and redemption workflows. By integrating this technology, ETF Shares aims to improve operational efficiency and risk management. The tool allows for the seamless distribution of portfolio composition files to authorised participants at the conclusion of each trading day, ensuring data consistency across the primary market.

The BSKT solution centralises primary market liquidity on the Bloomberg Terminal, allowing ETF Shares to manage electronic creation and redemption requests and track order lifecycles in real time. Standardised fund flow data assists portfolio managers in executing critical tasks, such as pre-trade compliance checks. Furthermore, once orders are settled, the system automates notifications to asset servicing providers, reducing manual intervention in the post-trade process.

As part of Bloomberg’s broader suite of ETF products, BSKT supports the entire investment lifecycle for issuers, investors, and liquidity providers. It complements other electronic market solutions, such as the RFQe service for secondary market trading. By automating the assembly of underlying asset baskets, the tool provides market-makers and authorised participants with a more efficient framework for managing ETF assets.

FIX Trading Community Proposes Recommendations for AI Regulation

The FIX Trading Community has submitted ten formal recommendations to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) regarding AI risk management in financial markets. This response addresses the growing integration of large language models and machine learning within algorithmic trading. The proposed framework aims to mitigate the risk of market instability and “contagion” caused by the rapid, interconnected nature of global AI-driven trading systems.

A central pillar of the proposal is the establishment of a globally recognised definition and taxonomy for AI to prevent regulatory arbitrage. FIX suggests anchoring new guidelines to existing standards, such as MiFID RTS 6 and DORA, while making company boards directly accountable for the effectiveness of AI governance. The recommendations also advocate for cross-functional oversight of third-party suppliers and the implementation of disclosure patterns for AI data and training, similar to food labelling.

Furthermore, FIX proposes expanding risk assessments to include “change sensitivity” and “interconnectedness” to account for non-linear AI behaviour. The group suggests that AI inventories must be more granular than traditional algorithm logs and that any fine-tuning or data refreshes should undergo rigorous materiality tests. By leveraging its expertise in algorithm certification, FIX aims to ensure that AI lifecycle controls remain robust as the technology evolves.

Lindsell Train Selects SimCorp One to Streamline Investment Operations

UK-based equity fund manager Lindsell Train has partnered with SimCorp to implement its integrated front-to-back platform, SimCorp One. The London-based firm, known for its high-conviction stock-picking strategy, will use the technology to support its concentrated portfolios across UK, Global, Japanese, and North American equity strategies.

The transition to SimCorp One is designed to simplify complex investment lifecycles by consolidating workflows onto a single platform. By leveraging increased automation, Lindsell Train aims to enhance operational efficiency across its front-, middle-, and back-office functions, providing a more robust foundation for future business growth.

The selection process highlighted SimCorp’s established reputation within the UK market and its collaborative partnering approach. The reliability of the platform’s integrated capabilities was a decisive factor for Lindsell Train in seeking to modernise its investment management processes and reduce operational friction.

Hex Trust and Haruko Integrate to Provide Real-Time Risk Governance for Institutional Digital Assets

Hex Trust, the digital assets financial services provider, has announced a strategic integration with the technology platform Haruko. This collaboration allows institutional clients to consolidate their regulated custody data, market activity, and staking performance into a single interface. By connecting Hex Trust’s multi-jurisdictional custody infrastructure with Haruko’s aggregation engine, the partnership aims to eliminate the data fragmentation often caused by managing assets across various exchanges and DeFi protocols.

The integration focuses on enhancing operational control and capital efficiency through holistic risk management. Clients can now access a unified view of their total exposure, allowing for more accurate credit and counterparty risk assessments. The system provides real-time performance reporting, including portfolio profit and loss and staking rewards, while ensuring data rigour for tax compliance and institutional reporting.

By automating the reconciliation of holdings and external trading data, the partnership addresses the growing governance needs of asset managers. This collaboration establishes a transparent framework for digital finance, providing the sophisticated risk analytics and pricing tools required for a professionalised investment ecosystem.