Exegy Incorporated, the market leader in low-latency solutions for global market data, predictive trading signals, and hardware-acceleration technology, and Vela Trading Systems LLC, a leading provider of data and execution technology for global multi-asset electronic trading, announced on May 20th that they have merged business operations in an agreement backed by Marlin Equity Partners, a global investment firm with over $7.5 billion of capital commitments under management. Operating as Exegy Incorporated, the combined company creates a dominant provider of premier data and execution...

Back Office Committee. On May 19, John Abel from the DTCC will be joining us to discuss Project STRIDE. Data and Tech Committee. On May 26, Kevin Tyrrell from NYSE will come on to discuss opening and closing auctions. Total return swaps. On June 3rd, Josh Galper of Finadium will discuss total return swaps vs. physical financing and the role of total return swaps in the Archegos liquidation sales

The next meeting of the FIF Rule 605 Working Group will be held on May 25 at 2 pm (ET). The Working Group will review responses from FIF members to a recent FIF survey about various Rule 605-related proposals.

The next meeting of the FIF Reg SHO Working Group will be held on May 27 at 10 am (ET). The Working Group will discuss specific Reg SHO issues and questions raised by FIF members relating to order marking, locate and close-out requirements.

FIF CAT Tech Specs Working Group and CAT Committee. The CAT Tech Specs Working Group discussed the following issues and questions raised by FIF members: the scenario where the only CAT-reportable change is the routedOrderID; requesting an extension of the date for reporting TIDType; the change in the TIDType field to an Array type; reporting Allocation events for corporate buy-backs; reporting the accountHolderType of “F”; and errors discovered after OATS retirement. The Working Group reviewed draft comments and questions for FINRA CAT relating to separation of CAT transaction reporting...

BNP Paribas Asset Management has appointed its deputy chief executive and global head of client group, Sandro Pierri, to take the reigns as its next chief executive officer on July 1st. He joined BNP Paribas in 1988, most recently leading the French group’s asset management arm for the last six years. Pierri has spent the last four years as global head of client group at BNP Paribas Asset Management after he was appointed deputy chief executive in January this year. Previously in his career, he also worked at Pixel Investment Management as CEO for less than a...

Cowen Digital Asset Investment Company, a division of Cowen, and PolySign, Inc. announced a strategic partnership, with the goal of enabling Cowen’s institutional clients to seamlessly secure, access and leverage cryptocurrencies and digital assets in their portfolios.  According to a story in MarketsMedia news, Cowen has made a $25 million strategic investment in PolySign.

Execution management system (EMS) provider Flextrade and Aladdin, the order management system (OMS) developed by asset manager BlackRock, are to deepen their partnership, with a seamless integration and collaboration between the platforms, in the latest example of consolidation across the market for execution management systems (EMS) according to Desk news. The two platforms have been largely successful in different asset classes – fixed income for Aladdin and equities/FX for Flextrade. The firms will now bring together BlackRock’s FI expertise and Flextrade’s equity / FX skills to allow...

IHS Markit’s thinkFolio investment platform is partnering with Wave Labs, a firm that has created fixed income tools to deliver a functional window for traders according to a story in Desk news. Wave Labs’ Electronic Liquidity Seeking Application (eLiSA) is an execution management system (EMS) that cuts away repetitive tasks. Using cloud-based application programming interfaces (APIs) to route orders and complete trades, it starts by eliminating the need for liquidity venue-provided user interfaces (UIs). eLiSA offers a set of both pre-trade and during-trade analytics, as well as multiple...