Currenex Debuts Staged Order Management

LONDON—Currenex has added a new staged order management feature in response to client demand for a large block trading tool, company officials say.

The new feature is an order management system (OMS) for clients looking for advanced controls to enhance operational risk management.

"Order staging creates separate and independent roles whereby a submitter has the ability to upload staged orders to the Currenex platform for execution by a trader that can work and execute a trading order in a controlled manner," says Richard Hartheimer, managing director at Currenex in London.

Users can prepare or upload orders to the staging area and follow these orders in the Trade Monitor. Submitters are able to cancel any orders before they are executed. The trader subsequently claims the staged order and "works" the order, Hartheimer says. Effectively, the trader can break the order into smaller trading orders. The staged orders can also be executed by multiple traders.

The status of orders such as pending, accepted, working or complete, is displayed at all times on the Trade Monitor. The new tool is an optional feature to help clients raise security levels when staging block trades. Currently, a small number of clients are using the feature with others planning to employ it in the coming months, say Currenex officials.

"Staged Order Management provides a new tool for asset managers, CTAs and hedge funds to better manage their FX needs," says Hartheimer. "In many large firms, order staging provides the best of both worlds, a means for taking advantage of specialized areas of expertise while providing increased control."

The independently operated Currenex offers corporate and institutional buyers and sellers in the foreign exchange and money markets electronic access to the global FX transaction venues. Its trading services include ESP (executable streaming prices), iceberg and hidden orders, spreadsheet trading, benchmark trading and access to prime broker capabilities. Prime broker partners include ABN Amro, JPMorgan, Barclays Capital, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale.

Currenex offers its services to sell-side firms that may want to automate the capture, processing and settlement of FX transactions. The vendor also offers white labeling services for firms that want to provide a pricing conduit to their customers.

Earlier last month, direct access and aggregation services vendor Lava Trading launched its version of the feature called a staging area for the foreign exchange suite LavaFX. Lava's technology combines market data distribution and order execution capabilities across Nasdaq, other exchanges, ECNs and ATSes.

Meanwhile, ECN Hotspot FX will be going into production with its staged order functionality this month, say Hotspot officials.