In other FinTech news, Options helps Systematica and Societe Generale works with Smartkarma.
Firm Says Platform Will Help Its Outreach to Investors
China Renaissance, an investment banking, securities and investment management firm with headquarters in Beijing and Shanghai, has deployed an Asian trading platform from vendor Fidessa.
The new IT backbone will support the expansion of the firm’s equities business across Asia via a centralized order management system that includes transaction execution, officials say. China Renaissance, which offers private placements, mergers and acquisitions, underwriting, securities brokerage and asset management, has offices in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and New York.
“We are committed to building an equities platform that better serves both domestic and international investors looking for opportunities in China’s high-growth ‘new economy’ enterprises,” says Yang Xia, managing director and global head of equities at China Renaissance, in a prepared statement. “By going live with Fidessa, we are well positioned to provide our clients with agile and world-class brokerage services. … We plan to further strengthen our product offerings within equities into 2017 and beyond to build a strong China Renaissance franchise.”
Fidessa has made localized solutions a “primary driver,” says Peter Lam, sales director at Fidessa Asia, in a prepared statement. “We are committed to working closely with our clients to develop reliable solutions that work across the Hong Kong, Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect markets,” Lam says.
The Fidessa platform offers FIX order capture, monitoring of client order performance, IOIs, pairs, algorithmic trading, basket trading, internalization, pre- and post-trade risk management, trade analytics and charting, vendor officials say.
Systematica Migrates to New Platform from Options
Options, a provider of cloud-enabled managed services to the capital markets, has recently completed a “successful platform migration” for a quantitative trading hedge fund, Systematica Investments.
The Options Managed Platform and Managed Applications solutions has enabled Systematica to have an “extensive rollout of a fully managed infrastructure and trading platform across all of the firm’s European, Asian and North American operations,” say officials at Options.
Systematica, founded by Leda Braga in January 2015, “uses science and technology as the driving force of its investment business,” officials say. “When the firm announced plans to replace its legacy infrastructure, it needed a strategic partner with the capabilities and scope to support ambitious trading platform innovations.”
Options worked with Systematica as the hedge fund “rebuilt its proprietary trading platform from the ground up and revolutionized its approach to data provisioning,” officials say. Options engineering staff helped transition “an entire trading architecture platform … with minimal disruption to trading operations.”
Options also deployed localized teams to support a phased transition at each of Systematica’s trading locations across Europe, U.S. and Asia, officials say. “To complement the enhanced trading architecture Options additionally migrated all employee desktop applications to its managed platform for improved day-to-day business operations across all Systematica offices globally,” officials add.
Societe Generale to Offer Smartkarma’s Investment Advice
Societe Generale has signed an agreement with Smartkarma, an online platform for investment advice on Asian markets, that will provide its institutional clients access to a new form of equity research.
In particular, the agreement will help institutional investors access Asia-focused equity research to meet key MiFiD II unbundling requirements, officials say.
“Societe Generale is the first global investment bank to have an agreement with an emerging fintech company to provide equity research that is compliant with evolving research unbundling requirements, such as MiFID II,” according to bank and vendor officials.
The Smartkarma platform offers access to “over 100 investment insight firms, comprised of approximately 400 analysts,” officials say. Its analysts have written about 1,600 companies across 15 Asian markets, “offering unconflicted, on the ground coverage, which in addition to large cap bottom up, also includes frontier markets, small and mid-caps and in-depth event driven IPO analysis,” officials add.
“This offering is complementary to our strong Cross Asset Research and Trading capabilities with access to over 125 markets and exchange venues globally,” says Stephane Loiseau, head of cash equities and global execution services, Asia Pacific at Societe Generale, in a prepared statement. “With this fast-growing ecosystem, we are providing clients with a new way to access research content that is compliant with the increased unbundling and transparent pricing requirements of research and trading services.”
“Over the coming months, we will work together to help clients optimize research budgets and meet evolving regulatory requirements without any need to modify workflow or add to administrative overheads,” says Raghav Kapoor, CEO and co-founder of Smartkarma, in a statement.
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