Northern Trust will extend Front Office Solutions outside North America as growth has exceeded expectations this year and the business completed an acquisition of Parilux Investment Technology. Front Office Solution provides technology to in-house investment teams for large endowments, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, pensions, insurance and multi-family offices. These in-house investment teams traditionally had to use separate systems for each asset class. Northern Trust has finalized its acquisition of Parilux Investment Technology, completing an investment that began in 2018.

MarketAxess Holdings Inc. announced that Barclays has committed to become a dedicated market maker and is actively contributing streaming prices for US investment grade corporate bonds to the MarketAxess Live Markets order book for institutional credit markets. Leveraging the anonymous all-to-all Open Trading marketplace, Live Markets provides a single view of two-way, actionable prices for the most active US investment grade bonds, including recently issued debt, benchmark issues and news-driven securities. Live Markets gives institutional credit investors and dealers the ability to place...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a proposal by exchange operator Nasdaq Inc. to allow companies to raise capital through direct listings. According to a story in Reuters news, the SEC said Nasdaq's proposed rule change was consistent with the regulator's rules and regulations and could be beneficial to investors as an alternative to a traditional initial public offering. The move is a big breakthrough for the exchange operator that has been pushing for an alternative for companies to raise money. The new IPO alternative could also potentially attract companies...

MayStreet, a market data technology and content provider, announced it has significantly increased the number of Asia-Pacific exchange feeds available in its Market Data Lake, a repository of global exchange data to fuel pre-trade, trading and post-trade analytics. The new content – which includes real-time and historical consolidated, top-of-book and full depth-of-book data from the leading equity, derivatives, commodity and fixed income exchanges in the region – largely completes the firm’s global, multi-asset coverage universe buildout announced last August. With the addition...

JP Morgan has expanded its partnership with Confluence to integrate the vendor’s risk and performance measurement data with its data and analytics platform for trading clients. From the third quarter of this year, Confluence Delta will increase its coverage to include US securitized products powered by JP Morgan’s proprietary analytics. It will also be available to JP Morgan’s securities services clients. According to a story in The Trade news, the move expands the five-year partnership the two firms struck in June 2019 during the first phase of the collaboration between JP...

On Thursday June 3 at 11 am ET, Josh Galper of Finadium will discuss market trends in total return swaps vs. securities lending, including the impact of Archegos. FIF has invited the members of the Back and Front Office Committee to participate on this call. If you do not have this invitation on your calendar and would like to participate on this call, please send a request to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and we will add you to the list. 

On Tuesday June 1 at 11 am ET the Rule 606 Working Group will discuss issues and questions raised by FIF Members relating to orders sent directly to an ATS, ATS matching with a single market maker, Rule 606(b)(3) requests from sub-accounts, and look through for Rule 606(a) options reporting.

FIF CAT Tech Specs Working Group and CAT Committee. The CAT Tech Specs Working Group reviewed recent FAQ updates relating to CAT orders received or originated but not executed prior to the date an Industry Member is required to begin reporting data to CAT, accountHolderType of “O”, reporting cash orders, and clearing firms reporting allocations to average price accounts of an Introducing Broker that may be exclusively for a specific client of the Introducing Broker. The Working Group discussed the most recent update from FINRA relating to OATS retirement. The Working Group reviewed and...

Data and Tech Committee. On Wednesday May 26 at 10 am et, Kevin Tyrrell of the New York Stock Exchange will discuss recent trends relating to opening and closing auctions.   Market Trends in Total Return Swaps vs Securities Lending. On Thursday June 3 at 11 am et, Josh Galper of Finadium will discuss market trends in total return swaps vs. securities lending, including how this impacted Archegos.