Oliver Haste

This move has allowed stakeholders insight into what CTs could look like, aimed at allowing participants to begin planning for how they might use the tapes.

Oliver Haste, chief administrative officer, designate, Bondtape, said: “These prototypes show the market that we are already capable of delivering robust, high-quality tapes and that we are committed to working together with the industry to develop the best product. 

“While these prototypes are only a small window into what the final tapes will look like, we believe in the power of demonstrating working products as early as possible to inspire confidence and seek actionable feedback.” 

Focused on both the EU and UK’s transparency regimes respectively, the prototypes consist of a ‘blotter’ each, comprised of the trade reports published on a given day. 

Specifically, the blotter updates intraday and includes a sorting and filtering functionality, allowing users to search by: maturities, venues, specific sets of international securities identification numbers (ISINs), and other areas. 

Read more: EU and UK regulators reveal updated plans for bond tape frameworks

According to Bondtape, the prototype “includes a functionality to ‘cleanse’ the reports, removing ‘out-of-date’ entries and leaving only the most recent, accurate version of a trade report,” importantly meeting FCA requirements for providers to offer both ‘raw’ and ‘clean’ data, which when used in practice work to prevent the ‘double-counting’ of trades.

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Bernard Sabrier

The new entity, named Kepler Cheuvreux Unigestion Equities, is set to focus on quantitative strategies and together will manage more than €3 billion in assets, subject to regulatory approvals. 

The first stage of integration will see Unigestion transfer the €3 billion in assets under management – specifically in the form of mandates and investment funds – and simultaneously integrate the entirety of its equities team into Kepler Cheuvreux’s operational infrastructure.

Following this, Kepler and Unigestion will create the jointly owned entity, alongside the management team, focused on accelerating the business’ development through external growth initiatives.

“Unigestion brings its quantitative and qualitative public equities expertise, enhancing Kepler Cheuvreux’s well-established research capabilities. This partnership merges fundamental and quantitative research approaches, optimising portfolio management while diversifying and expanding the range of investment strategies,” said the firms in a joint statement. 

In addition, Kepler Cheuvreux is contributing a sales force of over 130 professionals and more than 1,300 institutional clients across Europe, North America, and MENA.

The firms are also set to integrate ESG criteria into the management processes for Kepler Cheuvreux Unigestion Equities, including maintaining an “active dialogue” with portfolio companies.

Speaking about the partnership, Laurent Quirin, chair of the supervisory board at Kepler Cheuvreux and Bernard Sabrier, executive chair of Unigestion’s board, highlighted that this partnership is being driven by shared ambition to “provide institutional investors with sophisticated, innovative solutions tailored to the evolving market landscape”.

They added: “The combination of Unigestion’s quantitative expertise with Kepler Cheuvreux’s research, execution and distribution capabilities, enables us to unlock unique synergies and offer a distinctive, high-value proposition.”

The post Kepler Cheuvreux and Unigestion unveil joint €3 billion asset management plans appeared first on The TRADE.

Gavin White

The development will see trading hours go from the existing six and a half hours per trading day, to 16 hours.  

Specifically, the extended session will include access the US pre- and post-market periods. 

The launch aims to provide increased access to the US markets for traders, namely for those based in Asia. 

Extended hours trading will be powered by Cboe’s consolidated data feed, the Cboe One Feed. 

The Cboe One Feed provides quote and trade data for a unified view of the market from all four Cboe US equities exchanges: BZX Exchange, BYX Exchange, EDGX Exchange and EDGA Exchange. 

“The introduction of extended hours trading for over 1,000 US equity and ETF CFDs reinforces our commitment to innovation and client-centric solutions,” said Gavin White, group chief executive at 26 Degrees Global Markets.  

“We were one of the first prime of primes to launch equity CFDs via API to brokers back in 2019, and now, by significantly expanding trading hours in US markets, we’re providing brokers with greater flexibility, enhanced liquidity, and more opportunities to serve both new and existing clients.”  

Clients of 26 Degrees will also benefit from no additional commissions during the US pre- and post-market and the acceptance of all order types, including market orders, during all trading sessions, the firm added.  

“As more global investors look to invest in the US markets, Cboe aims to provide the needed data and access through collaborations with industry partners like 26 Degrees Global Markets,” said Adam Inzirillo, global head of Cboe Data Vantage.  

“We are pleased to provide their clients with access to the Cboe One Feed, which provides high-quality and real-time US equity market data and supports 26 Degrees and Cboe’s shared commitment to innovation and client-centric solutions.” 

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The bond index franchise includes bond indices spanning government, credit, and emerging markets bonds.  

In addition, the franchise includes tools and analytics which support the bespoke development of fixed income exposures. 

“We are excited to announce another significant step forward in our index expansion strategy, designed to strengthen our fixed income indexing capabilities, and broaden the services we provide to a growing international network of clients and partners,” said Tom Hendrickson, president, TMX VettaFi.  

“We see tremendous opportunity for indexing across the fixed income asset class – especially with the growth of bond ETFs – and we look forward to partnering with even more asset managers to unlock new bond ETF innovation.”   

Read more: TMX Group expands data-driven analytics and indexing solutions through $848 million VettaFi acquisition 

The development becomes the fourth acquisition by TMX VettaFi over the past 18 months. Recent acquisitions include iNDEX Research in October 2024, the ROBO Global index suite in April 2023 and EQM Indexes in September 2023.  

“Today fixed income represents approximately 20% of the ETF market, yet the total global bond market is $140 trillion, compared to the $115 trillion global equity market,” said Brian Coco, head of index product at TMX VettaFi.  

“With even stronger fixed income indexing capabilities,  VettaFi can truly provide outcome-oriented solutions to our clients across asset classes, as well as more precision exposures within fixed income.”  

The post TMX VettaFi Acquires Credit Suisse bond index suite from UBS appeared first on The TRADE.

In the first instance, futures contracts will be introduced on the Euronext Derivatives Milan market – with contracts focused on European government bonds including: Italy’s 10-year and 30-year BTPs, France’s OAT, Germany’s Bund, and Spain’s Bono. 

Specifically, the offering introduces the first mini futures cash-settled on European government bonds – specially designed with retail investors in mind. 

The move provides both asset managers and private investors increased granularity for hedging as well as taking exposure to government bonds. 

Anthony Attia, global head of derivatives and post-trade, Euronext, said: “The launch of our fixed income derivatives is a pioneering step that highlights Euronext’s commitment to innovation and client-centric growth. By entering this critical market segment, we respond to the needs of investors who seek diversified opportunities and competitive solutions.

“[…] This is a significant step forward in our strategy to expand our derivatives franchise, realising our vision of driving growth and efficiency across Europe’s financial ecosystem.”

Read more: Fireside Friday with… Euronext’s Anthony Attia

The new derivatives products are set to go live in September 2025 and trades are set to be cleared by Euronext Clearing.

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Goldie joins the investment manager from Morgan Stanley where she spent the last three years. 

During her tenure at Morgan Stanley, Goldie most recently served as a trader, a position she held for over a year, having previously worked as a portfolio management associate.  

Elsewhere in her career, Goldie held various portfolio management-related roles at Eaton Vance.  

Goldie announced her appointment in a social media post.  

Last November, fixed income investment bank KNG Securities also tapped Morgan Stanley for a new fixed income sales appointment –Mert Kisacik, now responsible for Turkish and Israeli markets.  

Kisacik had previously spent two years at Morgan Stanley, most recently as part of the bank’s emerging markets cross asset sales team. 

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The algos will be powered by Quantitative Brokers and made available via 360T’s trading platform across both disclosed and anonymous liquidity pools.

David Kalita & Matt O’Hara

Launched on Monday, the new offering features newly FX-optimised versions of Quantitative Brokers’ flagship algorithms Strobe FX – for schedule-based execution for TWAP and VWAP benchmarks – and Bolt FX – which is an implementation shortfall algorithm built to minimise execution costs relative to arrival price.

The algos have been tailored to FX microstructures that traders have to navigate day to day, David Kalita, chief executive officer at Quantitative Brokers, tells The TRADE.

“Traders are dealing disclosed with market makers that know who they are and therefore are constantly assessing their profitability and monitoring how they’re able to monetise the flow,” he explains.

“A common mistake that we’ve seen other people make in this space is thinking they can achieve great transaction costs on one trade by being really aggressive but then LPs [liquidity providers] widen out their pricing and tomorrow that price is no longer available.”

He explains that the new algorithmic offering launched today has a codified workflow that attempts to find a middle ground that supports both parties involved in a trade.

“We’re trying to find the happy medium where our LPs are being properly treated and getting reasonable flow that they can monetise at a healthy level and we’re still being able to achieve good transaction costs on any particular trade,” he says. “Finding that long run equilibrium between the two so you’re not sweeping across multiple LPs and you’re not being hyper aggressive is essential.”

In the coming months, Kalita confirms that two additional algos will also be launched to complete the suite. One targets the benchmark prices at the close, named Closer, and a more aggressive algo which is meant for more people that want to get done in 10-15 seconds, named Octane.

When asked why the pair had chosen now to launch their suite, the answer was simple: client demand.

“There has been growing demand for alternative algo solutions in the foreign exchange market particularly provided by independent third party providers who offer algo execution logic that points to various different curated pools of liquidity,” chief executive of 360T Americas, Matt O’Hara, tells The TRADE.

The executives explain that the pairing of Quantitative Brokers and 360T makes sense for several reasons. 360T has connections to many of the key non-bank market makers.

It also claims to offer unique data available in spot and in swaps around historical market pricing.

“That’s been very useful for us to assess not only our strategies but also use in our algo logic to make sure we’re executing good prices in a non-toxic manner,” says Kalita.

Deutsche Börse

360T and Quantitative Brokers are both owned by Deutsche Börse, acquired 10 and six years ago respectively.

“It is a great construct because we have the backing of the group which has fantastic brand reputation scale distribution but the group companies can retain their DNA, culture, be very customer centric, very innovative very entrepreneurial,” adds O’Hara.

360T has undertaken several other partnerships under the Deutsche Börse umbrella, O’Hara explains.

“360T partnered with Eurex to deliver FX futures through 360T’s distribution networks. 360T also produced some unique market data content sets focused on support swaps and forwards that are available through the Deutsche Börse market data services business,” he says.

The algorithms launched today were created and are powered by Quantitative Brokers.

There is scope for Quantitative Brokers to explore partnerships with other platforms in the future, Kalita confirms.

“Of course, QB has other clients and they potentially use other providers and so we’ll evaluate that as a needs must basis but right now this is available on 360T and we think that the product is going to be really strong particularly with this partnership,” he concludes.

The post 360T strikes deal to host new Quantitative Brokers FX algo suite appeared first on The TRADE.

Uday Chebrolu, FlexTrade

LoopFX is a liquidity venue which offers dark mid-point matching for asset managers and banks, specialising in large trades in excess of $10 million. 

Meanwhile, FlexTrade’s FlexFX solution can be deployed as a standalone solution or as a fully integrated component within FlexTrade’s multi-asset execution management system, FlexTRADER EMS.  

“The FX space is continually evolving, with innovative new solutions emerging that can positively impact trading efficiency and performance,” said Uday Chebrolu, head of FX and digital assets at FlexTrade Systems.  

“Integrating LoopFX into our platform gives our clients using FlexFX access to liquidity for large FX trades, enabling them to optimise their execution process while minimising market impact.” 

The new initiative from the two firms will enable mutual clients to access LoopFX’s matching functionality within their existing workflows in FlexFX.  

In addition, asset managers are able to send orders directly from the FlexFX order blotter to LoopFX, with no development work or changes to their workflows.  

The data available within FlexFX can also add value through sending trading performance data to FlexTrade’s transaction cost analysis tool, FlexTCA, to perform analysis to optimise execution quality.  

The business added that it plans to expand the integration further, combining FlexFX’s automation capabilities with LoopFX.  

“FlexTrade continues to show a client-first approach by providing its growing client base with direct access to LoopFX functionality within its existing workflows,” said Blair Hawthorne, founder and chief executive of LoopFX. 

The post FlexTrade and LoopFX integration set to optimise FX trading capabilities appeared first on The TRADE.

Meaghan Dugan

Dugan brings over 20 years’ experience in listed options trading and market making to the role. 

She previously served as head of options at the New York Stock Exchange, overseeing NYSE Amex options and NYSE Arca options markets.  

Before joining NYSE, she spent 11 years at Bank of America, most recently as head of product for US electronic options and global futures algorithms.  

Elsewhere in her career, Dugan worked at Morgan Stanley as a lead market maker in its automated market making business, and then later in MSET, an electronic trading team delivering trading algorithms and solutions to institutional and buy-side trading. 

As part of her new role, Dugan will be responsible for overseeing the business strategy, competitive positioning, market structure and market development for Cboe’s US options business. 

“I have long admired Cboe for not only its remarkable success in US options, but also its ongoing expansion into a truly global derivatives powerhouse,” said Meaghan Dugan, head of US options at Cboe.  

“[…] I am incredibly excited to join a team that shares my spirit of innovation and commitment to excellence, and I look forward to helping propel Cboe’s US options business into its next phase of growth.” 

Dugan’s appointment comes as part of Cboe’s latest expansion of its global derivatives team to strengthen its business development, market intelligence and sales capabilities across the US, Europe and APAC. 

Other recent appointments include Steven Jorgensen as head of derivatives sales for Europe and the Middle East, and Jason Beck as senior director of derivatives sales, head of Florida and US sell-side.  

Cboe’s APAC derivatives sales team has also expanded with the appointment of Hiroshi Okitsu, James Paik and Lydia Stringer as sales directors, and Vincent Wang as sales manager.  

Elsewhere, Cboe expanded its derivatives market intelligence team with the appointment of Henry Schwartz as vice president, market intelligence, and Ed Tom as senior director, market intelligence. 

“This is an incredibly exciting time for Cboe’s global derivatives business as we continue to unlock new opportunities for growth by scaling up globally across every critical function,” said Catherine Clay, global head of derivatives at Cboe.  

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The deal was first announced last September, and will see StoneX further enhance its fixed income offering and reach across Europe.

Octo Finances specialises in bond and convertible sales, debt capital markets, and credit research, serving clients including: banks, insurance companies, private debt funds, mutual funds, and private wealth managers. 

Anthony Di Ciollo, global head of fixed income at StoneX, said: “We’re thrilled to officially welcome Octo Finances to StoneX Group and believe the company will provide us with significant new capabilities. Our joint planning is well underway, and we are excited by the opportunities for growth for the combined business in Europe.” 

Read more: Fireside Friday with… StoneX’s Philip Smith

In the lead up to the deal last year, StoneX made a number of fixed income-focused hires across 2024, including former head of trading at Incline Global Management, Evan Halpern who was appointed managing director of fixed income outsourced trading in January, and Simon Pickworth, former MUFG, who was made an institutional fixed income trader for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA) in April.

Speaking at the time the acquisition was announced, Talabor Szabo, chief executive and co-founder of Octo Finances, enthused that “joining StoneX [is] a natural fit for Octo Finances.

He added: “StoneX’s commitment to innovation and client service aligns perfectly with our values and vision for the future. We are thrilled about the new opportunities this acquisition will bring and are eager to work together to enhance our offerings and grow our presence in the market.” 

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