Thomson Aligns Autex, TradeRoute With FIX Engine

NEW YORK--Thomson Financial is integrating its Autex indications of interest (IOI) system with its TradeRoute order-routing network via FIX, allowing customers to access both services over a single pipe on one FIX session.

The integration is made possible by using the Financial Fusion server at the central hub, hosted by Thomson, says John Spensieri, senior vice president of the sales and trading group.

Using the Financial Fusion engine also means the new TradeRoute--which is already rebranded internally as Autex-TradeRoute to underscore the integration--can handle large block orders of up to 3,000 orders per program, Spensieri says. The old TradeRoute did not have the capacity for size orders. Customers who want to do program trading have driven demand, he says.

The effort will entail migrating 150 buy-side customers and 100 broker/dealers on TradeRoute and 550 buy-side firms and 300 broker/dealers on Autex, a project that will take between six months and a year, Spensieri says. New customers will only join the new single-FIX-session Autex-TradeRoute.

There will be no price changes, and unlike previous migrations, Thomson will host and manage certification centrally by using TransactTools’ TTCert platform.

TradeRoute will also provide 24-hour service, rather than operating from 7am to 7pm.

The single-pipe, central-FIX-hub model resembles that of SwiftNet, but Thomson is approaching consolidated market connectivity from the front office, whereas most of Swift’s contacts are in the back office. Spensieri notes that Autex is 10 years older than Swift, and TradeRoute was introduced four years before Swift began to approach the sell-side front office. Still, "I’m cautiously nervous about the Swift FIX Hub," he says.

Thomson’s next big project is connecting its FIX hub to Omgeo’s Central Trade Manager. It will also do a similar integration for fixed income, but it is very "early days," Spensieri says.