ICE launches Polymarket tool, Broadridge buys CQG, and more

The Seattle Seahawks are Super Bowl champions (!!!), and I’m going to be annoying about it for at least a month. Apologies in advance. 

You may be asking how a New Yorker is a diehard fan of a Washington State football team, which is a question I get a lot. I have no connection to the city of Seattle, and I’ve never visited, though it is on my bucket list.

But in 2014, I paid attention to the Super Bowl for once and watched the Seahawks beat the Broncos 43-8. It was love at first sight. I experienced heartbreak the next year with Super Bowl XLIX, but I didn’t lose hope. I knew we’d get back to the big game someday. The Seahawks played (and beat) the Rams on my birthday this season, and it was then that I knew we had something special cooking. I believed.

And now I will relish in the glory.

Announced this week

ICE launches Polymarket signals and sentiment tool  

Intercontinental Exchange has launched the Polymarket signals and sentiment tool, delivering prediction market data and analytics. ICE will become the exclusive provider of this data for institutional capital markets.

Polymarket includes prediction markets that are related or adjacent to financial and commodity markets. ICE now offers normalized data feeds representing Polymarket’s prediction markets, enabling professional and institutional traders to consume crowd-sourced probability assessments as market signals. These signals indicate implied probabilities on real-world outcomes that are not typically captured by financial instruments and are designed to complement traditional market, pricing, and sentiment inputs within institutional workflows.

The service is delivered through ICE’s existing data infrastructure, with near real-time access via the ICE Consolidated Feed and historical time-series data available through ICE Consolidated History to support backtesting and quantitative analysis.

Etrading Software bids for EU OTC derivatives tape 

Etrading Software has submitted a tender application for the EU OTC derivatives consolidated tape as part of the Transparent Markets Europe Initiative (TME), a Netherlands-based non-profit foundation aiming to oversee and govern the operation of the consolidated tape. 

TME will be established as a single-purpose Dutch foundation with no shareholders and no activity beyond overseeing the operation of the tape. It has been designed as a neutral, cost-recovery market utility, with governance arrangements insulated from individual commercial interests and aligned with the European Securities and Markets Authority’s public interest objectives.

The founding members of TME include the German Investment Funds Association (BVI), the Derivatives Service Bureau, Etrading, PGGM, SIX Group, and S&P Global. During the tender phase, the initiative will be overseen by a temporary steering committee comprising Etrading, PGGM, SIX Group, and S&P Global.

Broadridge to acquire CQG 

Broadridge Financial Solutions has agreed to acquire CQG, a provider of futures and options trading, execution management, and market connectivity. CQG will add execution management, algorithmic trading, and analytics capabilities to Broadridge’s order management and client connectivity solutions.

The acquisition also aims to accelerate Broadridge’s innovation strategy across asset classes, spanning futures and options, foreign exchange, and digital assets. Aligning CQG’s agile development approach with Broadridge’s global scale will enable the delivery of new functionality faster.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close early in Broadridge’s fourth quarter. 

Deutsche Börse Group acquires remaining stake in ISS Stoxx 

Deutsche Börse Group has reached an agreement to acquire the remaining 20% stake in analytics and index provider ISS Stoxx, held by General Atlantic. The $1.31 billion transaction marks the culmination of a partnership that began with the acquisition of analytics and risk solutions provider Axioma in 2019. 

LMAX Group introduces Omnia Exchange 

LMAX Group has unveiled Omnia Exchange, an infrastructure layer enabling users to convert any asset in real time via a single API. Omnia unifies foreign exchange, crypto, stablecoins, and other digital assets in one platform, opening up access to unified wholesale liquidity and pricing and allowing users to move and settle value instantaneously across borders and asset classes. 

Derivative Path, CloudMargin partner on derivatives and collateral management solution  

Derivative Path, a provider of cloud-based capital markets technology and risk management solutions, and CloudMargin, a cloud-native collateral and margin management solution, have partnered to deliver a front-to-back workflow for OTC derivatives and collateral management. The collaboration enables integration between Derivative Path’s DerivativeEDGE platform and CloudMargin’s collateral management platform, enhancing operational efficiency and transparency for regional and community banks, and buy-side institutions.

Through single sign-on (SSO) access and automated data handoff between the platforms, clients will be able to accelerate onboarding, eliminate manual reconciliation, and meet their compliance and reporting obligations. Legal entity and agreement data already housed in DerivativeEDGE can be ported into CloudMargin, reducing implementation timelines and minimizing setup friction.

Solve launches confidence scores alongside AI-powered predictive pricing 

Solve, a provider of pre-trade data and predictive pricing for fixed income securities markets, has introduced confidence scores for corporate bonds. The AI-powered metrics are designed to enhance Solve’s bond pricing platform, Px, by quantifying pricing uncertainty on a standardized 1–10 scale. 

By pairing every predicted price with a measurable indicator of uncertainty, the scores aim to help clients better understand price quality, particularly in markets where liquidity and price discovery vary. Corporate bonds with recent trading activity, active quoting, and strong comparables may generate higher confidence scores, while less liquid securities may naturally reflect lower confidence. The offering is applied across Solve Px’s full corporate bond coverage, including highly illiquid bonds and trades of all sizes.

TP Icap launches ATS for structured products  

TP Icap Group has introduced Fusion Structured Products Trading Systems, an alternative trading system for electronic secondary market trading of US structured products.

The platform addresses liquidity fragmentation by providing a centralized order book, real-time requests-for-quotes, available market prices and firm offerings for issuer banks, distributors, wholesalers RIAs, and broker-dealers servicing institutional clients. 

Octaura integrates with Bloomberg OEMS platforms 

Electronic loan trading platform Octaura is integrating with Bloomberg’s order and execution management solutions, Bloomberg AIM and TSOX. 

Syndicated loan orders submitted from TSOX will flow seamlessly into Octaura’s system and automated trade messages will be sent to users for reduced operational friction, accompanied by data and insights to help decide how best to trade.

By combining Octaura’s real-time market information with a holistic view of portfolios on Bloomberg, clients can gain greater transparency and can make more-informed trading decisions to better manage risk. 

What you might’ve missed from us

Data standardization key to unlocking AI’s full potential in private markets

With private market investments reaching new highs, AI is helping make sense of its fragmented data, writes Vistra Fund Solutions’ Rosemary McCollin in this guest column. Information in private markets is spread across multiple systems, stored in inconsistent formats, and defined differently across teams and funds. Without reliable, standardized data, even the most sophisticated AI tools struggle to deliver meaningful or trustworthy outputs and help fund managers make informed decisions. Successful firms, she believes, will be those who are disciplined in their approach to data.

Fiber’s AI gold rush risks a connection drop

As the demand for AI and infrastructure such as a datacenters grows, asset managers and private equity companies are flocking to fiber-producing infrastructure firms in the hopes of scoring big. The fiber-producing companies have, until recently, flown under the radar amid the AI investing surge, despite their importance to the overall process of creating and training large language models.

But there are echoes of the dot-com bubble in this AI boom. And some industry figures warn the exuberance may be overdone, citing mislabeled capex and deals that leave hyperscalers keeping most of the long‑term value.

JP Morgan gives corporates an FX blockchain boost

JP Morgan’s Kinexys team is using blockchain rails to deliver near‑instant cross‑border FX payments and settlement for corporate clients. At the center of its on-chain FX settlement platform is JPM Coin, the first bank‑issued US dollar deposit token, which has since expanded to euro and sterling.

Fidelity expands open-source ambitions as attitudes and key players shift

Fidelity Investments helped develop Fluxnova, a Finos-hosted open-source orchestration platform that seeks to address back-office workflow automation, while providing optionality and flexibility. In the latest Waters Wrap, Tony dives into how and why attitudes around open source are changing across capital markets—and what it has to do with Big Tech firms and the new generation of AI giants.

Ram AI’s quest to build an agentic multi-strat

Ram Active Investments is seeing a future where agents are chasing alpha. The Swiss investment firm has launched Hyperfold, a multi‑strategy investment approach made of seven alpha strategies, six developed with agentic AI. Agents at Ram AI autonomously query the firm’s central data pool, code variations of strategies, backtest them and also apply fundamental screening frameworks to tasks usually done by junior analysts.

Using agentic AI reduced development time for new strategies by about 50–70%, according to CIO and co‑founder Emmanuel Hauptmann.

In other news

Australia’s ASX CEO Helen Lofthouse to step down in May, Reuters 

The Australian Securities Exchange has announced that current CEO and managing director Helen Lofthouse will step down from her post after 11 years with the exchange. 

The change in leadership isn’t necessarily a surprise. Lofthouse has dealt with the fallout of the original Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (Chess) replacement project for a bulk of her tenure, including increased pressure from an Australian Securities and Investments Commission investigation into operational failures at the exchange operator.

WatersTechnology’s sister publication, Risk.net, reported last June that the Australian regulator had commissioned an expert panel to assess operational failures at the ASX, but three sources were concerned that the intervention could further delay the long-awaited delivery of a new version of Chess. 

The replacement is expected to be rolled out in two phases, with clearing first this year, followed by settlement and sub-register in either 2028 or 2029. Reuters reports that clearing could come in April despite Lofthouse’s exit in May. 

The story of the ASX over the past few years has been fascinating on multiple levels. Right when you think the story has ended, boom! A new chapter.