Credit Suisse, TD Securities, Green Exchange

Credit Suisse Prime Services has inked a global software licensing agreement with trading platform provider Trading Technologies International (TT), say officials. Under terms of the deal, Credit Suisse Prime Services will make available TT's high-speed derivatives trading platform X_Trader to its commodity prime services hedge fund customers and internal trading desks in the Americas, Europe and Asia, using TT's fully managed hosting solution TTNet to distribute the X_Trader. In other TT news, the vendor now has a gateway to connect X_Trader to the Tokyo Financial Exchange (TFX), a futures exchange.

Toronto-headquartered TD Securities has selected electronic foreign-exchange (e-FX) trading software provider TraderTools' straight-through processing (STP) platform, STPlatform, according to vendor officials. The firm intends to take advantage of STPlatform's FX order management features, including full STP, automatic order execution tool AutoFill, an order application programming interface (API) with order importing capabilities, as well as complete branch and customer functionality, officials add.

The Green Exchange, a joint venture of several capital markets firms and the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), has recently added two new members. Vitol SA, an energy trading firm, and RNK Capital, a private energy and environmental markets investment firm, will support the exchange, which will trade a range of environmental futures, options, and swap contracts for markets focused on solutions to climate change, renewable energy and other environmental challenges, say officials.

A new U.S. futures exchange has been named ELX Electronic Liquidity Exchange, officials announce. ELX was formed last December by a dozen financial institutions including Bank of America (BoA), Barclays Capital, Citadel, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, eSpeed, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch and The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). U.S. Treasury futures will be the first product launched by ELX in 2008, with additional products anticipated later in the year, according to officials. In other ELX news, the bourse now has an independent software vendor (ISV) program to support access to the exchange by a range of market participants. The program's first participant is trading system vendor Realtime Systems Group.

Nasdaq OMX Group recently received U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval for its equity and index options market, the Nasdaq Options Market. The new exchange, set to go live March 31, plans to operate a fully automated, price-time priority market with an opportunity for price improvement that provides a level playing field to all participants, according to officials. It will also provide a routing service to orders when trading is not present on the Nasdaq Options Market, officials add.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have signed a mutual cooperation agreement. The agreement establishes a permanent regulatory liaison between the regulatory agencies, provides for enhanced information sharing, and sets forth several key principles guiding their consideration of novel financial products that may reflect elements of both securities and commodity futures or options. The two bodies are first tackling two new derivative products, options and futures contracts based on streetTracks Gold Trust Shares.

Derivatives trading technology and connectivity provider Orc Software has recently announced the release of the latest edition of its Trader and Liquidator products, say vendor officials. Version 7.0 of Orc Trader includes new automated trading functionality, analytics, market access, ultra-low latency and risk management enhancements, according to officials. The latest version of Orc Liquidator will feature the ability to write trading strategies entirely in Java as well as new volatility models such as the Clamped Spline model, GUI enhancements, as well as an extended simulation environment, officials add.

Financial intranet provider Atrium Network is now offering connectivity to Chi-X, a pan-European multilateral trading facility (MTF), vendor officials recently announced. Recently, Atrium and IP-based trading communications platform provider IP Trade inked an exclusive global re-seller deal that makes Atrium the exclusive re-seller of IP Trade trading turrets on an application service provider (ASP) basis (DWT, Feb. 11).