Electronic-Trading Newsflashes

BNY acquires Sonic Financial Technologies to beef up direct-access.

The Bank of New York (BNY) has acquired software and other assets of Sonic Financial Technologies, a provider of direct-access electronic-trading solutions. The purchase enables BNY's multiple trading-platforms to provide broker dealers and institutional investors with enhanced smart-order routing and improved direct-access trading to all major equity markets. These include the New York Stock Exchange, other exchanges Nasdaq and alternative-trading systems.

The bank will use Sonic's technology to enhance the in-house trading platforms of Pershing and BNY Brokerage. "Sonic's capabilities enable us to offer the trading tools required by our clients to adapt to the evolving equity-market structure," states Joseph Velli, executive vice president in a release.

E*Trade targets direct access with hook up to Orc ExNet network.

E*Trade Securities, the institutional division of E*Trade Financial, has joined the Orc ExNet network to offer direct-market access to clients of Orc Software, the Swiss provider of advanced market-making, trading and brokerage technology,

Under the agreement, clients of Orc Software will have direct-market access to the leading cash-equity markets in North America and Asia through E*Trade Financial's institutional-brokerage infrastructure.

Orc Software's clients will have the ability to trade equities electronically without their own exchange memberships via E*Trade Financial on the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, American Stock Exchange, Toronto Stock Exchange, Tokyo Stock Exchange, Osaka Stock Exchange and Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.

E*Trade Financial will provide straight-through processing and settlement services for Orc Software clients. In total, Orc ExNet can provide access to more than 30 markets without the need of exchange membership, while the Orc System enables access to a total of more than 70 markets.

MarketAxess to launch Treasury bond-trading service via ICAP BrokerTec.

MarketAxess Holdings struck an alliance with ICAP to cover electronic trading of U.S. Treasury benchmark securities over the MarketAxess platform.

This alliance will allow MarketAxess' dealer participants to provide institutional-investor clients access to the benchmark liquidity of ICAP's BrokerTec government bond-trading system. Investors will select a MarketAxess participating dealer to represent their order in the BrokerTec trading system, preserving the counterparty relationship they already have in the government-bond market.

The new U.S. Treasury service will be integrated into the existing MarketAxess trading platform, with a launch expected to be early in the third quarter of this year. The first phase will be introduced to U.S. customers with future implementation for European customers.

MarketAxess is the leading electronic multi-dealer-to-client trading- platform for U.S. and European high-grade corporate and emerging- markets-bond trading. ICAP is the world's largest volume electronic inter-dealer-broker.

Tradeware Buys B2B and Omiris Neworks to expand into cross-border trading and settlement.

Tradeware Systems Corp., a provider of electronic order-management systems and direct-access trading-connectivity solutions in North America, is expanding internationally with the acquisition of Broker-to-Broker Networks Inc. (B2B) and its U.K. operating subsidiary Omiris Networks Ltd. Omiris is a provider of cross-border electronic-trading solutions.

Tradeware, based in the Wall Street area, has created a new subsidiary Tradeware Global (UK) Ltd., to market a product that combines Tradeware's Financial Information Exchange-based order-management system with Omiris Networks' direct-market-access platform.

The Tradeware Global platform will offer real-time access to the central limit-order books at 22 stock exchanges in 16 European securities-markets, for a fixed price of less than $15 per transaction. A comparable service would be delivered by multiple vendors, at a cost ranging from $100 to $300, the company states.

"Using the Omiris platform, broker/dealers in, for instance Paris or Helsinki can execute and process the same trades, for example, in Germany in combination with local Germany brokers, just as if they were operating in Frankfurt," stated Tradeware Chairman John Marino in a release.