Electronic Trading Newsflashes

Instinet Group reports $19 million in first quarter profits; Banc of America Securities signs R&D pact with Microsoft for trade-execution products; MB Trading to provide direct-access trading to GL Trade customers.

Banc of America Securities signs R&D pact with Microsoft for trade-execution products.

Banc of America Securities' (BAS) Electronic Trading Services (ETS) group will collaborate with Microsoft to research and develop new solutions for optimizing trade-execution performance.

The deal is part of ETS' newly launched Electronic Trading Alliance program, a partnering framework in which BAS collaborates with leading technology vendors and trading venue to provide seamless access for clients. ETS and Microsoft will work closely with leading third-party application vendors to on front-office interoperability, according to the release.

In citing reasons for the collaboration, Rob Flatley, managing director of ETS, states in the release, that increasingly, integration of electronic-trading products will depend on Web services, which in Microsoft solutions are supported by the .NET Framework. In addition, Microsoft's integrated platform and Microsoft .NET offerings are enablers of plug-and-play connectivity, a key feature of ETS' offerings, he further states in the release. Flatley notes that ETS' Direct Access Offering is built on the Microsoft Windows platform.

ETS previously announced an alliance with Linedata Services to connect ETS to the LongView Trading order-management system.

2 of 3