Virtu Financial, Inc. announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Investment Technology Group, Inc. which has been unanimously approved by the Board of Directors of ITG and Virtu. This acquisition represents a significant expansion of its agency services, including transparent trading and workflow technology, analytics, and liquidity solutions that all leverage Virtu’s global, scaled technology infrastructure. The transaction is expected to close during the 1st half of 2019 after receipt of ITG shareholder approval, and all required regulatory...

On Friday, November 2nd, the SEC issued a final rule require additional disclosures by broker-dealers to customers regarding the handling of their orders.  Specfically, the Commission is adding a new disclosure requirement which requires a broker-dealer, upon request of its customer, to provide specific disclosures related to the routing and execution of the customer’s NMS stock orders submitted on a not held basis for the prior six months, subject to two de minimis exceptions and is also is amending the current order routing disclosures that broker-dealers must make publicly...

Following the publication of the CAT Industry Member Technical Specification on October 30th, FIF has formed a CAT Tech Spec Requirements Working Group to 1) review and suggest additional business scenarios/FAQs to the SROs; and 2) assist firms during the implementation process of the CAT.  If you would like to join this working group, please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or register here.

On Tuesday, October 30th, a contingent of FIF members representing retail broker-dealers, whole market makers, and an analytics provider along with FIF staff met with the SEC Division or Trading and Markets and Staff to Chair Clayton and Commissioner Peirce to discuss SEC Rule 605 modernization recommendations.  FIF will review the content of the meetings and propose next steps during the FIF Rule 605 subgroup meeting on Monday, November 5th @ 1:00 pm.  

Phase 2c Rep Order Linkage – Prep for Nov 7 SRO Deep Dive - Prepared for an in-person meeting with the SROs on Wednesday, November 7th to address the challenges of reporting phase 2c representative order linkages to the CAT. FIF CAT FDID Subgroup - FIF focused on the updated meeting materials in preparation for the Nov 13th in-person meeting with the SROs on outstanding FDID issues.  Of note, we worked off of the premise that account number will not be permissible as an FDID, and therefore our goal will be to outline the challenges of the current FDID construct and to...

Deutsche Bank has hired a senior algorithmic trading head to lead its Americas electronic equities desk in its most recent effort to bolster the business. According to a story in The Trade, James Rubinstein has been appointed head of electronic equities for the Americas region at Deutsche Bank in New York. He joins the German investment bank after spending more than 12 years with UBS, most recently as a managing director and Americas head of algorithmic trading and analytics. Prior to his time with UBS, he spent two years working with order and execution management systems at FlexTrade, and...

Barclays announced that John McFarlane will retire as Chairman of Barclays in May 2019, and that Nigel Higgins has been appointed to succeed him, subject to regulatory approval by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. Mr. McFarlane will step down as a Non-Executive Director and as Chairman of Barclays with the conclusion of the Barclays AGM on May 1, 2019, at which point Mr. Higgins will assume the role of Chairman, having joined the Board as a Non-Executive Director on March 1, 2019. Mr. Higgins is currently Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co.,...

Deutsche Bank is launching its enterprise analytics capability, which collates and analyses millions of lines of data daily to identify opportunities for efficiencies in the bank’s and its clients’ securities settlements. According to a story in Markets Media, Deutsche Bank’s Securities Services will be bringing live its new enterprise analytics capability in November 2018, enabling daily data analysis on securities transactions. They’ll begin in the German market, with a wider roll-out planned. The platform represents a key step towards unlocking the value of...

Refinitiv, formerly the Financial and Risk business of Thomson Reuters, has launched its quantitative analytics platform QA Direct in the Cloud through Microsoft Azure. QA Direct in the Cloud builds upon the QA Direct platform, offering a scalable platform to manage, maintain and integrate quantitative analysis and investment data. The platform delivers a repository of financial data along with quantitative alpha models and other third party content sets allowing customers to explore how their investment hypothesis performs under a broad range of market conditions. QA Direct in...