Chi-Tech Taps euNetworks to Launch MarketPrizm Trading Ecosystem

Chi-X Global Technology’s deal with euNetworks, announced last week, forms the basis of Chi-Tech’s MarketPrizm business’s plan to create what it calls “a European trading ecosystem,” offering a one-stop platform for European electronic trading. As such, it positions Chi-Tech head to head with NYSE Technologies in a bid to provide financial markets participants with the infrastructure they need to connect to and trade across the increasingly bewildering array of European execution venues.

According to Nicolas Levy, the former GL Trade executive who is now managing director of MarketPrizm, “We are offering unparalleled flexibility and a fully managed connectivity and application services suite that removes the technology and cost barriers to algo and high frequency trading in the U.K. and Europe.”

Armed with access to euNetworks’ dark fibre network linking 19 markets, MarketPrizm aims to provide neutral access to the region’s market centres. It will also offer a fully redundant co-location and proximity hosting infrastructure, a range of application services, and ultra low-latency market data delivered via a 10Gbps logical mesh network structure.

The MarketPrizm solution, Chi-Tech says, is “designed to solve the challenges firms face in deploying and maintaining a flexible, state-of-the-art architecture for all types of electronic trading.” As Chi-Tech sees it, the changing European market landscape has required firms to enhance and often completely replace their trading technology infrastructure in order to access centres of liquidity in the region, process low latency market data, manage real-time risk and flexibly support changing business models. This infrastructure challenge has rapidly driven up the cost of trading and operations in the region.

MarketPrizm’s connectivity options and component applications will be delivered via a neutral framework that allows clients to select the solution that meets their requirements. This open delivery framework will also allow MarketPrizm to offer components that fit into and enhance a client’s existing technology stack, rather than a packaged offering.

Through a series of partnerships with preferred suppliers – with several still to be announced – MarketPrizm plans to offer a range of application services options. These will include pre- and post-trade risk management, order gateways, multi-venue market data acquisition, latency measurement and smart order routing, the company says.

The connectivity infrastructure that powers MarketPrizm is being provided by euNetworks Group Limited, Europe’s foremost provider of mission-critical, high performance networking solutions. Brady Rafuse, CEO of euNetworks, says the company has been “working closely with the MarketPrizm team to design a bespoke, ultra-low latency network connectivity solution to power the MarketPrizm ecosystem.”

London-based euNetworks, which is listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, operates a €1 billion all-optical network. The company owns and operates 15 metropolitan networks throughout Europe connected by a fully owned, high-capacity backbone. It is also is initiator and a member of euro-one, a collaboration of fibre-optic network providers to deliver infrastructure and next generation networking solutions connecting Eastern, Central, Western Europe and North America.

The MarketPrizm European trading network launch is Chi-Tech’s first major announcement since its own inception last year, through the acquisition of Cicada Cos. by Chi-X Global. Chi-X Global operates the various Chi-X marketplaces – the most visible of which has been the successful Chi-X Europe – and is a subsidiary of electronic trading specialist and agency broker Instinet, which itself is owned by Japanese investment bank Nomura.