In other news, the Boston Fed & MIT finish CBDC project, Cboe deals with a burst pipe & Nasdaq and DSE expand their accord.
FNZ Scores Sixth Win in Australia
UBS Australia and vendor FNZ report that the bank has deployed the Syn~Ops post-trade securities processing product suite across multiple asset classes in markets around the globe — the sixth Australian firm to migrate to Syn~Ops.
The FNZ’s Syn~ product suite offers “real-time trade and settlements processing capabilities at a global level” via a cloud-based architecture and “workflow-based automation,” officials say.
The platform migration to Syn~Ops will help UBS with many “operational improvements including increased transparency and accessibility. … Major operational improvements have been delivered across the board, including in multi-entity processing, inventory management, financial reporting, and access to data,” according to the announcement. “The FNZ platform enables UBS to further optimize its operations through the ability to add additional markets and asset classes rapidly.”
“In a fast-evolving sector we wanted a modern platform for our post-trade operations. FNZ’s Syn~Ops will provide us the necessary platform flexibility and scalability as UBS’s volumes increase over time,” says Scott Hanlon, head of Australia Operations at UBS, in a prepared statement.
Boston Fed & MIT Complete CBDC Research Project
The “Project Hamilton” joint research effort between the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to clarify the “technical feasibility of a potential central bank digital currency [CBDC]” has completed its work and is offering its findings to others trying to advance CBDCs.
“The project was announced in 2020, and in February 2022, the Boston Fed and MIT released the OpenCBDC software and a whitepaper describing their initial findings,” according to the announcement. “OpenCBDC is a core processing engine for money that focuses on security, performance, scalability, and flexibility. It provides a codebase that supports 1.84 million transactions per second and settlement – meaning the transaction is completed – of under one second.”
OpenCBDC is open-source research software “and project leaders urged global contributors to continue working on it,” officials add.
The OpenCBDC codebase “from this successful collaboration provides a credible and unbiased resource to evaluate design choices and ensure that a potential future CBDC could serve the public’s interest,” says Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT, in a prepared statement. The focus of the project was a “better understanding the capabilities and limitations of different technologies that might be used to manage and transfer CBDCs.”
Project Hamilton got its name from central bank “Founding Father” Alexander Hamilton and MIT and Apollo Mission computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, officials say.
Boston Fed and MIT researchers will release additional retrospectives on Project Hamilton’s findings in 2023, officials say.
Burst Pipe Causes Water Damage to Cboe Floor
Cboe Global Markets re-opened floor trading of options on the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) on Wednesday, Dec. 28, after the Cboe trading floor shut down on Dec. 27 for a day “as a result of water damage sustained from a burst pipe above the trading floor,” officials say.
A Cboe spokesperson tells FTF News that “the extreme cold contributed to the incident.” There have not been any incidents since open outcry trading and floor functionality for VIX/VIXW options were restarted on Dec. 28.
“The situation of the past week underscores the excellence of the Cboe team in operating well-functioning and resilient markets. This incident occurred on a holiday, and trading on the Cboe Options Exchange remained unimpacted by this event,” according to the spokesperson.
“Full hybrid trading (which includes open outcry plus electronic functionality) resumed seamlessly on Wednesday, December 28, after a one-day pause in open outcry trading as we transitioned to all-electronic trading and relocated the VIX options trading pit to an alternative space on the floor. There have been no incidents, and trading has continued to operate smoothly,” the spokesperson says.
The water damage caused officials to move VIX and VIXW options “to Post 8, Station 1, effective Wednesday, December 28. In addition, SPY options will move to Post 7, Station 1. Cboe will advise on any future Post or Station updates that are needed due to water impact remediation,” officials add.
“All other products and areas of the Cboe trading floor, including the S&P 500 Index (SPX and SPXW), Russell 2000 Index (RUT), SPDR ETF (SPY), and all equity options trading crowd spaces have not been impacted and continue to be available for both their regular electronic and open outcry trading,” officials say.
There are no additional post or station updates slated for the week of January 2.
“Trading in a fully hybrid mode will continue uninterrupted. Construction to repair the ceiling above the VIX trading pit is underway,” the spokesperson says.
The Cboe Operations Support Center can be reached at + (866) 728-2263 osc@cboe.com and the Cboe Trade Desk is at + (913) 815-7001 tradedesk@cboe.com
Nasdaq Expands Contract with Dhaka Stock Exchange
Nasdaq and Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) officials report that they have extended their partnership to include “an upgrade of Nasdaq’s X-stream INET technology” to help DSE with increasing trading activity.
“During 2022, DSE successfully launched a new Alternative Trading Board – ATB – and an SME market. DSE today have over 300 brokering intermediaries and processes around 400,000 equity trades per day in its 650+ listed securities with a combined market cap of around 73 billion USD. To facilitate the next stage of its expansion, the upgrade of its trading system will be an integral part,” according to the official statement.
DSE has had a commercial relationship with Nasdaq since 2014.
“By further investing in Nasdaq´s world-class technology we are confident that we will be stand even better equipped to further empower investors looking to implement sophisticated trading strategies,” says M. Shaifur Rahman Mazumdar, acting MD of DSE, in a prepared statement.
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