ESG Book Chosen to Support Data Project in Asia

ESG Book will provide data to an Asian-based project to address gaps in the sustainability data record. ESG Book, a open data initiative led by vendor Arabesque and backed by a dozen major banks, will be among providers of information to the Sustainable Finance Institute Asia’s (SFIA) Single Access Point for ESG Data (SAFE) initiative. ASIA is a collaboration between multiple stakeholders in the Asia Pacific region.

MSCI and Google to Harness Generative AI in ESG Data Offering

MSCI and Google Cloud are to jointly create generative AI solutions in an expansion of a collaborative effort to build a data marketplace for ESG investors. MSCI intends to offer the technology driven by Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, along with its climate tools BigQuery Geospatial and Earth Engine.

Tradeweb Completes A$125 Million Acquisition of Australian Trading Platform Yieldbroker

Tradeweb Markets Inc., the global operator of electronic marketplaces for rates, credit, equities and money markets, has finalised its A$125 million all-cash acquisition of Yieldbroker, an Australian trading platform specialising in government bonds and interest rate derivatives for Australia and New Zealand.

Both companies were early pioneers in bringing technology to fixed income markets. The acquisition will provide Yieldbroker’s clients access to Tradeweb’s broader global marketplace and advanced technology, while Tradeweb’s clients will gain entry into the expanding bond and derivatives markets in Australia and New Zealand.

DMALINK Surpasses Funding Target, Bolstered by Bank Partnerships

UK-based institutional trading platform DMALINK has exceeded its funding goal of £425,000 on Seedrs, achieving a pre-money valuation of £17.3 million. The platform, which focuses on FX and crypto trading, has previously raised funds on Seedrs and is in partnership with several banks including Credit Agricole, Nomura, and Danske Bank.

DMALINK generates revenue through transaction fees and a subscription-based real-time market data service, offering “favourable trading conditions” by avoiding monthly terminal or integration fees.

IPC and Celoxica Deliver Connectivity & Risk Management to Tier 1 Investment Bank in Taiwan

IPC has teamed up with Celoxica to provide a Tier 1 Investment Bank in Taiwan with a fully managed colocation solution that improves Direct Market Access (DMA) and pre-trade risk management. The service uses IPC’s Connexus platform and is hosted in the CHT data centre. It promises more efficient market access and reduced trading latency in Taiwanese financial markets.

The collaboration integrates Connexus with Celoxica’s Market Access Gateway (MAG) platform, which supports trading across multiple asset classes, with ultra-low latency pre-trade risk management. The Investment Bank also gains cost efficiencies by moving from a capital to an operational expenditure model.

Executives Planning to Substantially Increase ESG Data Spend

ESG data demand is on the rise among portfolio managers, with the vast majority planning to substantially increase spending on the resource, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The financial data giant’s ESG Data Acquisition and Management Survey of more than 100 managers and executives found that 92 per cent would boost spending on ESG data by more than 10 per cent and almost a fifth would increase it by 50 per cent.

The survey found, however, that around half of respondents said that contending with new ESG content and managing multiple data feeds was a challenge.

Exegy Launches Advanced Ticker Plant for Optimised Options Market Data Processing

Exegy, the front-office trading solutions vendor, has introduced its next generation ticker plant, specifically designed for processing options market data. The new platform is capable of processing the entire OPRA feed on a single 2U server and offers a 2x reduction in latency compared to its predecessor.

As options trading volumes rise and with the new OPRA feed set to launch on October 9th, OPRA’s guidance states that participants should prepare for capacity of 120+ million messages per second following the expansion. Exegy’s FPGA-based appliance is designed to provide significantly higher throughput than software-based systems.

TS Imagine Integrates CLSA’s AI-powered European Algo Suite into its Platform

TS Imagine, the global provider of trading, portfolio, and risk management solutions for financial institutions, has integrated CLSA’s AI-powered European algorithmic trading suite into its platform. This move is part of TS Imagine’s ongoing effort to offer cutting-edge trading tools to its clients.

Investment managers who use TradeSmart, TS Imagine’s platform with pre-certified connections to over 250 brokers and venues, will now have access to CLSA’s AI-powered European algorithmic suite, a proprietary AI technology allowing the algorithms to learn and adapt as they trade, and which uses neural networks and dynamic execution planning to adapt trading strategies in real time based on changing market conditions.

Bloomberg Launches New FX Pricing Quality Tools for FXGO Clients

Bloomberg has introduced a new suite of FX Pricing Quality tools to clients of the FXGO multi-bank FX trading platform, through MISX, the company’s multi-asset reporting tool for electronic trading. The tools allow users to swiftly analyse and assess pricing quality and performance for any RFQ pricing requests sent over FXGO, including batch trades,

The new FX Pricing Quality Tools aim to help both price makers and takers understand and improve their pricing quality. Price makers can pinpoint missed pricing opportunities and their causes, such as internal counterparty setup issues or internal credit rejects. Price takers, on the other hand, can investigate counterparty pricing performance, including how often a counterparty priced and won a trade or declined to price.

Aquis Exchange Acquires Minority Stake in US-based Startup OptimX

Pan-European equities market operator Aquis Exchange has taken a minority stake in OptimX Markets Inc., a US-based startup focused on block trading solutions. The investment will enable Aquis to integrate its technology platform with OptimX’s suite, which is aimed at aiding investment banks, brokers, and institutions in the block trading market.

The investment totals $1.5m, and is made as part of a consortium that includes DB1 Ventures, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Boerse Group. Aquis’s COO, Jonathan Clelland, is expected to join the OptimX board as a Non-Executive Director in the future.