Shareholders in Spanish stock exchange Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME) have accepted a €2.8 billion takeover bid from Swiss exchange operator SIX Group according to a story in The Trade news. SIX confirmed in a statement it had acquired 93.16% of equity share capital in BME for €2.6 billion at €32.98 per share. The accepted offer has been adjusted from the initial bid of €34 per share due to additional dividend payments linked to the deal.   

Virtu Financial has confirmed it saw a record day of trading activity on its POSIT Alert Europe block indications network in June, according to a story in The Trade news. POSIT Alert Europe saw more than £1.256 billion in notional value traded on 5 June this year, surpassing the previous record set in Europe in October 2018. The new record follows sweeping changes to the block indications system, which Virtu inherited following its $1 billion acquisition of agency broker ITG.

Nasdaq announced it launched Nasdaq Basic Canada—a feed that provides investors around the globe with access to real-time quote and trade data for the full range of Canadian listed equities.  The service will be listed on Nasdaq Cloud Data Services (NCDS), which provides clients access to real-time equities, options, news, index, and fund data.  Nasdaq Basic Canada combines data from Nasdaq CXC, CX2 and CXD trading books for all TSX, TSX Venture and CSE listed securities.

Vanguard is launching a robo advisor – Digital Advisor - that covers key elements of long-term financial planning.  The automated service is aimed at younger investors and cuts out human financial advisers entirely. According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, Vanguard plans to roll out both Digital Advisor and its Personal Advisor Services.

CLS and IHS Markit announced that Goldman Sachs has joined its cross-currency swaps settlement service. According to a story in Markets Media, the service is an extension of CLS’s payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement service and uses the MarkitSERV trade confirmation platform to allow CLSSettlement members to send their cross-currency swaps into CLSSettlement for settlement.

FIF's June 8 CSDR/EU Buy-In Working Group Meeting  focused on a question and answer session Andy Hill; Senior Director, ICMA and Matthew Johnson, Associate Director, DTCC.  The Q&A session centered upon the ICMA's and DTCC's perspective on several issues concerning the impact of the new EU settlement regime on US-domiciled firms. If you are interested in joining this working group, please update your profile here or reach out to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

  FIF CSDR/EU Buy-In Working Group - FIF was joined by representatives from the DTCC and ICMA who provided members with CSDR interpretative and implementation guidance.  Specifically, the ICMA and DTCC focused on ACATS/Conversions, Buy-In Penalities, Pass-Throughs etc...  FIF will be holding a follow-up meeeting with ICMA and DTCC Representatives in a couple of weeks to cover remaining questions and issues.  FIF CAT-OATS Parallel Reporting Working Group - The group reviewed the first iteration of the CAT/OATS Primer which covered topics such as order...

The CBOE is pushing back the re-opening of its Chicago trading floor to Monday, June 15.  “The decision to postpone the reopening is in light of closures across the city of Chicago and limited access to the area surrounding the CBOE building,” the exchange said in a Chicago Tribune story.

Refinitiv has launched an application programming interface (API) tool to automate access to its FX swaps trading venue for clients, as the market continues to move towards electronification. Known as Forwards Matching API, the service is based on the Spot Matching API which is already widely adopted by FX market participants. It aims to further trading efficiencies with quick access to liquidity and additional transparency on data. The Forward Matching platform is part of Refinitiv’s multilateral trading facility (MTF) for FX swaps, which supports hundreds of billions of dollars in trading...