ELECTRONIC-TRADING NEWSFLASHES

Morgan Stanley reduces processing time via Intel, IBM; ABM AMRO chooses AFS Investor trading engine; CME to provide Globex trading.

IBM announced that it's working with Morgan Stanley to migrate analytical applications to run across a grid of Intel processor services, resulting in a reduction in processing time. "IBM has demonstrated significant performance improvement in a financial-analytics application that runs across a grid of several hundred Intel processor-based machines," states Richard Anfang, managing director, Morgan Stanley in a release.

ABN AMRO Professional Brokerage integrated AFS Investor trading engine from Automated Financial Systems Corporation (AFS) into its AACES Online retail trading system. ABN AMRO Clearing and Execution Services (AACES) and its Professional Brokerage division turned to AFS to augment its existing online-system with advanced trading functionality for retail and institutional clients.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) began providing Globex trading access to Bloomberg subscribers. Under the agreement, subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional and Bloomberg Tradebook services will have direct order-execution connectivity to CME's Globex electronic trading platform for all products traded on Globex as well as access to real-time and historical CME market data. "We are delighted to team up with Bloomberg to further expand the global distribution of CME's electronically traded contracts," states Arman Falsafi, CME managing director.