LCH EquityClear Goes Live with LSEG Technology Post-Trade Platform

LSEG Technology has announced that it has implemented a new clearing platform for LCH’s EquityClear service. The risk management and trade processing platform offers a solution for a variety of clearing, operations, and risk management processes.

LSEG Technology’s platform delivered to LCH is configured to clear and track risk for 20 million trades per day at a throughput of 1,600 trades per second. The platform successfully processed EquityClear’s largest ever volumes processed with nearly 80 million trade sides cleared in the first five days of operation.

SIX, Nasdaq Partner for Greater Microwave Access

The Swiss Stock Exchange and the operator of Nasdaq´s Nordic exchanges signed a partnership in the first quarter of 2020 to expand the current European microwave network, fostering equal access to the most modern market data transmission technology for the benefit of all market participants.

The Swiss Stock Exchange has announced that it is to establish a jointly owned company with Nasdaq. The new company, RF Nordic Express AB, will build and operate microwave routes for the transmission of market data from Stockholm to London. Having taken a majority stake in 12H AG, the operator of its microwave network, earlier this year, SIX now owns and operates the largest microwave network in Europe. This network allows all Swiss Stock Exchange trading participants to benefit from low-latency market data transmission from Zurich to London, Frankfurt, and Milan, as well as from Milan to Frankfurt and London. The parties have agreed not to disclose the amount of the investments.

FTSE Russell, JSE Launch Fixed Income Indexes

FTSE Russell and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) have launched a series of co-branded fixed-income indexes.

Under the terms of the agreement, FTSE Russell will now serve as the benchmark administrator for JSE’s fixed-income indexes and will provide daily index calculations on the FTSE/JSE All Bond Index Series and FTSE/JSE Inflation-Linked Index Series. These indexes are designed to represent the performance of domestically-issued South African government, state-owned, and corporate bonds, which aim to provide investors with comprehensive market coverage.

FTSE Russell and JSE have partnered in providing equity indexes since 2002 and agreed to launch co-branded fixed-income indexes in 2017. 

BTON Financial Partners with Genesis To Automate Trading for Asset Managers

BTON Financial, the outsourced dealing desk for asset managers, and software solutions provider Genesis have announced their partnership to automate trading workflows. The partnership helps drive front-office transformation, bringing together Genesis’ ability for agile software development and BTON Financial’s independent technology and data-driven approach to outsourced dealing in the form of their Smart Broker Router.

BTON Financial selected Genesis as its technology partner because of its deep market expertise and its application platform that aims to cut down on lines of code used and which is built specifically for capital markets. By using the Genesis platform, BTON is able to create solutions quickly without having to write substantial lines of code, making the development and deployment of these solutions faster, simpler, and easier to support, according to the release. 

CFTC Issues No-Action Relief for Foreign Affiliates of FCMs

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO) announced that it has issued additional targeted, temporary no-action relief to foreign affiliates of certain futures commission merchants (FCMs) in response to the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. The relief expires on Sept. 30, 2020.

The pandemic has caused compliance with certain CFTC requirements to be particularly challenging or impossible because of displacement of personnel from normal business sites due to social distancing and other measures. Subject to the conditions stated in the letter, the relief provided is as follows:

“DSIO has granted temporary, targeted no-action relief to permit certain foreign affiliates of FCMs that are exempt from registration with the Commission by CFTC Regulation 30.5 to accept orders from US persons for execution on US contract markets in the event an affiliated FCM’s US personnel are unable to handle the order flow of US customers due to their absence from normal business sites. [See CFTC Staff Letter No. 20-12]”