Industry Updates

NYSE Euronext rushes Asian expansion with acquisition of Metabit

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

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Stanley Young Opalesque Industry Update - NYSE Euronext, a cross-border exchange group, announced on Tuesday that it had finalized a deal to acquire Metabit, a Tokyo-based provider of market access products across Asia including Japan. This deal is meant to address growing customer interest and the ever-expanding Asian financial marketplace – and it will allow hedge funds to speed up their investment processes in Asia.

Under the terms of the agreement, Metabit will operate as a product line with NYSE Euronext’s division, NYSE Technologies. NYSE Technologies provides transaction, data and infrastructure services and managed solutions for buy-side, sell-side and exchange communities.

The agreement should be completed by the third quarter of this year. Terms of the acquisition were not immediately available.

Stanley Young, NYSE Technologies’ CEO, commented on the deal, “Metabit’s products are built in Asia for Asia, and this combination fits our strategy, our connectivity business and our customer interests”

The acquisition is expected to provide positive synergy with NYSE Technologies’ operations as Metabit has in-depth experience and understanding of financial markets in Asia. The company is focused in streamlined, low-latency technology solutions that enable industry-leading access to financial markets across Asia. Metabit’s products connect buy-side order flow with sell-side exchange participants and are designed exclusively for low latency direct market access (DMA) and exchange connectivity to markets through-out the continent.

Headquartered in Tokyo and with offices in Australia and Hong Kong, Metabit has established a trading community of more than 140 trading firms in Asia.

Young added that Japan and Asia are priorities for NYSE Euronext, and that he believes “this is absolutely the right time” to invest in the region.

Metabit’ CEI Daniel Bürgin said that the combined skills and expertise of his company and NYSE Technologies could be highly beneficial to delivering innovative solutions to their customers and to accelerate achieving their long-term business goals. As part of the deal, Bürgin will head the NYSE Technologies Asia business and report to Young. Peter Tierney, Managing Director of NYSE Technologies will become the Chief Operating Officer of the combined business in Asia. Bürgin and Tierney will lead the business operations of the merged firms.

NYSE Euronext and its unit NYSE Technologies have been making strides the past few months. Last week, Americas Trading Group selected NYSE Technologies as a primary technology provider for the development and operation of ATG's new electronic trading platform for the Latin American markets. And in June, NYSE Euronext entered into a new venture with EMC Corp. and VMware Inc. that will allow financial institutions direct access to NYSE' services through the fast-growing technology trend known as cloud computing. (See yesterday’s relevant article: Hedge funds embracing cloud computing Source)

Precy Dumlao

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