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Deutsche Bank is using Mint middleware from SunGard's Step division to consolidate its global financial messaging, and manage the connections under the auspices of the bank's Global Messaging Architecture (GMA). The GMA program, developed by Deutsche Bank, saves costs and provides standardized, global service levels across its entire range of banking services, say bank officials. In particular, Deutsche Bank has been running multiple gateways to Swift, and needed to streamline this effort, officials say. The Mint messaging software acts as a hub for handling communications across applications, networks, and branches, and offers external interfaces to Swift, Crest, and other industry utilities. Deutsche Bank reduced its Swift connection points from 42 to two, with global gateways in Frankfurt and London. Deutsche Bank is also using Step MintNet routing to deliver messages internally across branches and lines of business.

Officials of the all-electronic NYSE Arca unit of the NYSE Group last week implemented a portfolio crossing system (PCS) that will allow entire portfolios of stock to be reported at the close of late trading sessions. Clients of NYSE Arca, formerly the Archipelago Exchange, can trade portfolios with a minimum of 15 stocks with a value of at least $1 million. The service is open to all NYSE-, Nasdaq-, Amex- and NYSE Arca-listed stocks and will occur at 8:01 p.m. EST for PCS cross orders entered before 8 p.m. EST via NYSE Arca.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) last week in Washington, D.C. to further cooperation between the two regulatory bodies. The ongoing dialogue will focus on corporate governance reforms, convergence of national accounting standards with International Financial Reporting Standards, and the use of IT to enhance the usefulness of reported of financial information, among other issues.

The New York Board of Trade (Nybot) voted last week to begin a demutualization process that will convert the member-owned, not-for-profit organization into a for-profit company. Nybot is following in the footsteps of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) (DWT, March 6), and the American Stock Exchange (Amex), which kicked off demutualization in March, allowing Amex seat owners to convert their seats into shares (DWT, March 27). The Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX) also made the same move two years ago (DWT, Aug. 9, 2004).

BT Radianz, a U.K. financial networking services provider, is launching Extended Reach, which allows existing BT Radianz customers to connect more easily to their clients in emerging financial centers worldwide, such as in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. BT Radianz will use the BT Group global frame relay networks to provide access to up to 40 new countries, without companies needing to pay for private leased lines. The service is already in use by some financial institutions, according to BT Radianz officials.

The Thailand Futures Exchange (TFEX) launched early last week via the Stock Exchange of Thailand's (SET) building. Thanong Bidaya opened the new exchange on the 31st anniversary of the launch of SET, which commenced trading on April 30, 1975; SET introduced a bond-trading service in 2004. With derivatives trading in place, Thailand is hoping to develop its activities. The first product to be offered by the new futures bourse is SET50 Index Futures.

RTS Realtime Systems, a trading software provider, is adding access to the Taiwan Futures Exchange (Taifex) and the Taiwan Stock Exchange via its RTD trading platform, officials at RTS confirm. Taifex offers futures and options on major Taiwanese stock indices, government bond futures, equity options and 30-day CP interest rate futures. The new connections will allow futures traders to tap even more in the Asian markets, where there has been an exponential growth, according to John Dempsey, business development manager at RTS. In other news, RTS has signed a distribution deal with Italian IT company Dianos. Under the terms of the deal, Dianos will act as an RTS partner to distribute, sell and support RTS' professional tradition solutions for the Italian market.

Following last year's trading technology problems, the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) is implementing measures to increase the system's trading capacity this month, TSE officials say. On May 8, the number of executions per day via the TSE clearing system will rise to 8.4 million; it is currently limited to 5 million. On May 22, the stock trading system will be able to handle 12 million orders compared to the current 9 million. This number is expected to rise to 14 million before the end of the year. Also, the Market Information System is expected to handle 30,000 messages per minutes sometime this year; the current system limit is 20,000 messages a day.

MarketXS, a vendor of real-time market data technology and trading solutions, has launched FIX Engine, a FIX protocol translator designed to serve as the core of TradeNet, the vendor's hosted FIX-based order routing platform. TradeNet allows for the routing of orders between multiple execution venues and institutions in multiple asset classes. The FIX Engine is available as a standalone application or as an adaptor to TradeNet for more complex straight through processing (STP) integration requirements, allowing third-party systems to connect to the FIX-based TradeNet platform without having to invest in FIX engines. FIX Engine's transactional Java application program interface (API) engages in a distributed transaction with the user's trading application and FIX Engine's transaction manager coordinates the distributed components. FIX Engine targets FIX connections in environments built with messaging platforms such as the Java Message Service (JMS), TIB/Rendezvous from Tibco Software and IBM's WebSphereMQ. The FIX Engine supports both FIXML and FIX 4.0 to 4.4.

Reuters and Novell are officially working together to bring the Reuters Market Data System (RMDS) into the open source SuSE Linux environment, officials from both companies say. The alliance is driven by the needs of user firms such as Deutsche Bank, which has been experimenting with RMDS on SuSE Linux since 2003 (Trading Technology Week, April 14, 2003). Reuters has joined Novell's PartnerNet program and has certified RMDS on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, which bought SuSE in 2003 (TTW, Nov. 10, 2003). RMDS customers Deutsche Bank and Susquehanna International Group (SIG) were cited by Reuters as customers running RMDS with the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. Both firms decline comment. A key goal of the port to SuSE was working to the Linux Standard Base (LSB) specifications, an application binary interface (ABI) for Linux and Linux-compatible platforms, says Jack Gidding, head of product management for RMDS. Reuters sought the binary compatibility so that it would not have to maintain two separate code bases for the Linux options for RMDS. "That was very important from a business perspective," he says. RMDS runs in the Red Hat Linux environment. Red Hat officials decline to comment on the SuSE port. The demand for RMDS on SuSE will come predominantly from Europe where SuSE has a greater presence, says Michael Parlapiano, Reuters global head of Information Management Solutions. Novell officials say that the SIG installation is a sign of growing demand for SuSE beyond Europe.