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Fidessa group plc (LSE: FDSA) has today announced that Aizawa Securities, an independent securities company headquartered in Tokyo, has selected Fidessa as its new proprietary and wholesale agency trading system.
2013 was a significant year for the Japanese marketplace with a number of milestone events, including the merger of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Osaka Securities Exchange to form the new Japan Exchange Group. The cash equity markets merged in July and the integration of the derivatives markets is due to be completed in March 2014. The new exchange platform interface, upcoming changes in decimal tick sizes for equity cash trading and the easing of short-sell uptick rules have prompted security firms to upgrade their systems. Growth in trading volumes throughout 2013 – based on the expectation of economic recovery in Japan – together with continuing efforts by venues to lower latency, has led to an increased demand for faster trading platforms too. Fidessa's fully managed platform has been designed to provide proprietary trading firms with greater efficiency and lower overall IT investment overheads by minimising venue system upgrade costs.
Hitohiko Kimura, General Manager of the Securities Dealing Department at Aizawa Securities, comments: "There are many benefits to unifying our prop and wholesale agency systems on Fidessa's comprehensive trading platform. By outsourcing our front-end trading system operations to Fidessa, we will stay ahead of the evolving exchange trading system environment and changes in trading rules, whilst keeping system upgrade costs to a minimum. We expect that BlueBox, Fidessa's fully integrated algorithmic trading engine, will contribute to the introduction of automated trading into our prop business."
"We consider Fidessa to be a strategic partner with its extensive experience and presence in global markets. The Fidessa platform will enable us to meet the demands of our buy-side clients by providing sophisticated trading capabilities to our wholesale agency business. As part of our global expansion plans, we want to offer our domestic clients the ability to trade overseas stocks, as well as reach out to overseas investors wishing to trade Japanese equities. By utilising Fidessa's global connectivity network and BlueBox we can provide both direct market and algorithmic trading services to those overseas customers", continues Kimura.
Ian Chilton, Chief Executive of Fidessa in Japan, comments: "Aizawa made a strategic decision in selecting Fidessa for both their agency and prop trading businesses. Fidessa has extensive experience in the domestic agency trading business and we have recently expanded our platform to cater for domestic prop businesses with their specific needs and unique compliance requirements. I am confident that Fidessa will deliver against Aizawa's current business needs, and we will continue to evolve and enhance our systems to meet their future needs too. Fidessa is fast becoming the benchmark prop/agency trading system for domestic security firms in Japan."
Fidessa's global products and services support around 25,000 users across 1,000 clients worldwide and are used by 85 per cent of tier-one financial institutions. Fidessa's global network provides connectivity to more than 3,600 buy-sides and 775 brokers across 200 markets around the world.
