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.
