Nomura will use MarktPrizm’s dedicated multi-venue ultra-low-latency infrastructure to provide a specific service to suit the requirements of Nomura, enabling it to upgrade its trading infrastructure with improved performance and speed for its clients in equities, futures and foreign exchange between exchange co-location venues. The decision by Nomura to outsource is just one example of an emerging trend in the financial markets where investment banks and other large buy-side institutions are seeking to consolidate the way they can get efficient access to markets and data at lower costs.
“Decisions such as Nomura's represent a big shift away from DIY infrastructure,” says Tanuja Randery, MarketPrizm’s chief executive officer. “Whereas in the past an investment bank would have tended to do it themselves, they are now looking to outsource, which shows their belief in the resilience of our infrastructure, not to mention their willingness to let a third party manage it for them.”
In late June MarketPrizm launched its FX service, PrizmFx, to add to existing services other asset classes, such as equities, derivatives and commodity markets, with networks and co-location hubs based in all the leading trading centres, including 13 exchanges.
This consolidation offers a substantial opportunity for market data and infrastructure providers, as more and more trading firms seek to connect via data centres and to access an increasing array of liquidity providers.
“Our second-generation network will benefit all of our clients through better, faster access to 10 co-location venues over Nomura's DMA and algorithmic trading services," says Andrew Bowley, co-head of electronic trading at Nomura.
MarketPrizm is majority owned by Colt Group. It acquired the controlling stake from Chi-X Global in May last year, as it seeks to leverage off MarketPrizm’s financial data offerings and trading infrastructure, as well as its own portfolio of low-latency connectivity and proximity hosting, to gain a bigger slice of services to the financial markets.
Colt’s main shareholder is Fidelity Investments. Randery became CEO of MarketPrizm when Colt took control.