FTEN Plans Expansion into Europe
July 20, 2009
FTEN said it will begin offering its technology for executing and controlling the risk of high-frequency trading into European markets.
The New York firm, which claims that its technology is used to process more than $100 billion of transactions every day in U.S. markets, said it is creating an overseas unit called FTEN Europe Ltd. And named Valerie Bannert-Thurner its executive director.
FTEN founder and CEO Ted Myerson called the move a "natural extension" of its business aimed at the prime brokers who handle trades for hedge funds and other proprietary trading firms.
Bannert-Thurner comes to FTEN from Skyler Technology, a supplier of fast market data analytics feeding into high-speed trading engines. She also holds a doctorate in strategic management from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Bannert-Thurner said her three biggest objectives for the European expansion effort of FTEN would be to work with sellside firms to build up their sponsored access businesses, where market participation IDs are used to allow clients to trade directly on electronic exchanges; educate regulators on how sponsored access works and risks are controlled; and bring innovative technology to market, working particularly on managing risk in real time, both before and after trades.
Myerson would not say what kind of market share goals FTEN has for Europe. The firm estimates that its technology now processes more than 20 percent of the average daily volume in the U.S. of equity trades.
"There's no doubt in my mind that we will be able to replicate that same success, across Europe,'' he said.
High-speed trading on electronic exchanges such as Chi-X and Turquoise have picked up steam in the two years since the European Union finalized its new market rules, under its Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.
