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

Upcoming Webinar: How to move to a modern, component based trading architecture using a Buy AND Build approach

Date: 7 May 2026 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes To remain competitive in today’s electronic markets, firms need trading architectures that support rapid innovation, effortless integration of new capabilities, and the agility to respond to shifting market demands. This is prompting technology leaders to move beyond the traditional...

BLOG

MiFIR Schema 1.4.0 Rollout: Testing Clarity Still Pending – April Deadline Remains

As of mid-February 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) MiFIR reporting webpage continues to indicate that a dedicated test environment for updated transparency messages would open in February, with exact dates to be confirmed in January. No detailed testing calendar has been published at the time of writing. The result is a compressed...

EVENT

Buy AND Build: The Future of Capital Markets Technology

Buy AND Build: The Future of Capital Markets Technology London examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions.

GUIDE

Practicalities of Working with the Global LEI

This special report accompanies a webinar we held on the popular topic of The Practicalities of Working with the Global LEI, discussing the current thinking around best practices for entity identification and data management. You can register here to get immediate access to the Special Report.