In addition, daily volume for crude palm oil futures (FCPO) contracts also charted a historical high of 63,019 contracts on Wednesday, surpassing the previous record of 48,741 contracts on 17 November 2011.

This is attributed to increased hedging activities resulting from the volatility and uncertainty seen in global financial and palm oil markets.

Cecelia Zhong, Head of Greater China Business Development, NYSE Liffe

GF Futures is a leading player in the Asian derivatives market and through its membership of NYSE Liffe, clients of GF Futures can now access the Exchange’s European markets through its colocation facilities based in NYSE Euronext’s European Liquidity Centre.

“We are delighted to welcome GF Futures not only as a member of NYSE Liffe, but also as our first Asian based colocation customer” said Cecelia Zhong, the Head of Greater China Business Development, NYSE Liffe. “Asia has been identified as a strategic priority for the group, and we are reinforcing our commitment to the region, as well as our obligation to support a global trading infrastructure for our European contracts, by providing premier products and services, such as colocation, to our Asian customers.”

“Colocating servers in NYSE Euronext’s European Liquidity Center allows us to expand our business further into European markets” said Dr. XIAO Cheng, General Manager of GF Futures. “Through our colocation offering and acting as their broker, we have already brought access to our first High Frequency Trading customer, a major player in the Asian markets, who will be trading the European interest rate Euribor contract and European equity index futures.”

NYSE Liffe opened its Hong Kong office in December 2011, headed by Cecelia Zhong, to further strengthen the group’s strategic exchange alliances in China and Hong Kong, as well as to generate new business and better serve its existing customers in the region.

Duncan L. Niederauer, CEO, NYSE Euronext

The agreement was designed to explore opportunities for extending the global reach of both exchanges. The MOU will enable the two exchanges to explore opportunities for information sharing; exchanging and training employees; as well as business cooperation such as joint research into developing strategies for the derivatives market.

“Asia is a strategic priority for NYSE Euronext and we are delighted to partner with Mr. Yuchen and his colleagues at the China Financial Futures Exchange,” said Duncan L. Niederauer, Chief Executive Officer, NYSE Euronext. “This agreement deepens our long term commitment to the region, and by sharing best practices and working collaboratively, CFFEX and NYSE Euronext will further promote the development and advancement of both the Asian and global financial markets.”

Garry Jones, Group Executive Vice President and Head of Global Derivatives, NYSE Euronext, said: “We have customers who trade our derivatives contracts all over Asia and this MOU with the China Financial Futures Exchange – along with our physical presence in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo – further illustrates our commitment to Asian markets. We look forward to unlocking efficiencies and trading opportunities in both markets by working closely and our sharing expertise with the CFFEX.”

“This collaboration will further develop both exchanges derivatives markets and facilitate the experiences of our customers and NYSE Euronext’s,” said Zhu Yuchen, Chief Executive Officer, China Financial Futures Exchange.

Andrew Walsh, CEO at IRESS

IRESS is a principal supplier of financial markets and wealth management systems in Australia, Asia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom, employing more than 650 staff in 14 offices worldwide. To support its global business expansion, IRESS has entered into a global agreement with Equinix to expand into IBX data centers in Hong Kong, Singapore and London, which will complement the existing IRESS deployments in Toronto and Sydney.

By leveraging Equinix’s ecosystem, IRESS can build service delivery environments that are less complex, more cost-efficient and higherperforming. IRESS will benefit from global data center network connectivity, offering localized and reliable services to its customers across Asia. Equinix’s global footprint with established financial ecosystems will provide IRESS with access to major stock and securities exchanges, and enable the company to interconnect with customers and partners located inside Equinix IBX data centers, thus improving time to market.

“We have worked closely with Equinix since we first deployed in its IBX data center in Toronto. Over the past two decades, we have grownsolidly by expanding our presence to bring localized services to our customers,” said Andrew Walsh, CEO at IRESS. “Building on the success of the recent deployments in Sydney and other territories, we are confident the breadth and scope of Platform Equinix will enable us to provide our customers and partners with innovative and sophisticated solutions moreefficiently as we grow our business in Asia and other parts of the world.”

“We are excited to collaborate with IRESS to optimize its provision of services in the financial services industry and to see the company expand its global business with Platform Equinix, through the dense network of service providers, vast ecosystem of exchanges and broad range of financialinstitutions,” said Tony Simonsen, managing director, Equinix Australia. “This engagement further strengthens the global financial ecosystem inside Equinix which already offers best-in-class connectivity and colocation in the world’s top 16 financial markets.”

Jonathan Parkman, Co-head of Agricultural Commodities at Marex Spectron said: “We are delighted that Samson has chosen to join Marex Spectron at this exciting time in our development. We are very focussed on building out our capabilities in Asia. With our market-leading franchise in Agricultural products, expanding our Asian presence was a natural step. Samson has a particular expertise in sugar which is a growth area for the firm.”

Under the MIRs, a crossing system is ‘any automated service provided by a Participant to its clients which matches or executes Client Orders with Orders of (a) the Participant; or (b) other clients of the Participant’. This means that any automated and or systematic matching of client orders may be subject to the rule, including participants’ use of vendor-provided crossing-system solutions. This includes a system that matches an order with an order currently reflected in the market. For example a system that identifies orders in the market operator’s order books that it can match and report as priority or NBBO crossings. Orders matched on-market by a market operator’s trading system that are “accidental crossings” are not subject to this reporting.

Participants operating such systems also have reporting and notification obligations under Part 4.3 of the Competition MIRs. In particular, participants are required to send a Crossing System Initial Report (‘Initial Report’) no later than 20 business days before the participant begins to operate the crossing system. This places an obligation to self report on crossing systems, and address at least the matters listed at Table 11 of RG 223. Once the system is operating, participants are required to send a Crossing System Monthly Report (‘Monthly Report’) within 20 business days of the end of the previous month. This report needs to include the daily aggregated information on orders and trades (as per Competition MIR 4.3.3), and any changes provided in the Initial Report. For example, a participant changing its method of matching and executing trades, including moving from ASX’s priority crossing to reliance on the off-order book ‘at or within the spread’ exception, or reporting to a different market operator, should notify ASIC in its Monthly Report. For more information, participants should contact their ASIC relationship manager.

Participants are also reminded that the Monthly Report must comply with the guidance in paragraphs 199-203 of RG 223, including the file name and file type. ASIC is finding that some crossing system operators are not following the correct format, and not using the correct identifier for the crossing system. ASIC can provide participants with a sample report on request.

We look forward to industry’s cooperation in this matter, and remind participants there are penalties (up to a maximum of $100,000) for failing to take account of these obligations.

The market surveillance system will improve on technology which was originally designed for a single market – not multi market – and not across markets with different products. The system will allow for greater capacity and capability, as well as cope with the increase in HFT and algorithmic trading. The enhanced market surveillance system will have superior capabilities to search data records and identify suspicious trading, by connecting patterns and relationships, which is beneficial in detecting insider trading relationships, and consistent with ASIC’s strategic priority of maintaining fair and efficient financial markets. With Australia now achieving some of the highest levels of share ownership, market integrity and efficiency is an ASIC priority, and the new system promotes this through the prevention, detection and deterrence of market misconduct.

Stock markets are the engine room for economic growth in Australia. The new surveillance system will promote the integrity of our stock markets through the prevention, detection and deterrence of market misconduct. This in turn, will contribute to the confidence of investors, and the efficiency of our capital markets.

The cost of the enhanced surveillance system reflects the increase in the cost of supervision due to the increase in the complexity of trading methods used in our market with the advent of competition and the dispersed trading venues (the licensed exchange markets and dark pools operated by the large investment banks). The funding has been provided on the basis of full cost recovery from the industry.

The model for cost recovery is a matter for Treasury who, we understand, will take advice from the government. It has also established the Cost Recovery Panel of industry representatives that will advise the government on issues regarding recovery of the cost of market supervision. As a percentage of market turnover, the actual cost of market supervision is favourable compared with overseas jurisdictions. The funding cost itself we expect will be smoothed out to minimise impact, and will be outweighed by the medium to long-term benefits of competition, and of well regulated fair and efficient markets.

Dr. Wang Yanqing Head of China Operations Sungard

Wang Yanqing Ph. D, vice president and head of China operations in SunGard’s asset management business said, “CITICS selected SunGard because of our product management strategy, our deep understanding of Chinese and international business and our proven reliability in delivering on-time, on-budget implementations in China. For many institutions within the Asia Pacific region, the expanding economy has meant that they need to modernize their technology infrastructure to support and drive growth. SunGard continues to help by providing local expertise and successful implementations of SunGard’s Asset Arena Investment Accounting in China.”

SunGard’s Asset Arena Investment Accounting helps firms quickly adapt and innovate their businesses to support growth plans by helping them manage the accounting business for both Chinese domestic [does domestic refer to US? Unclear since this is being released in China] investment portfolios and QDII (Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor) fund in one system. SunGard’s Asset Arena helps institutions benefit from a more streamlined environment for providing cross-border portfolio valuation.

Dr. Richard Bentley, VP at Progress Software

CITIC Securities selected the Apama solution in response to the growing demand from institutional investors in China for more algorithmic trading services. These investors want access to low-latency algorithmic and high-frequency trading strategies across multiple asset classes. The Apama algorithmic trading platform will enable CITIC Securities traders to create customized execution algorithms that operate on domestic markets and can manage high volumes of client order flow. These unique, customized strategies will provide CITIC Securities’ institutional clients a significant competitive advantage.

Additionally, CITIC Securities will use its new Apama algorithmic trading platform to offer innovative, pre-packaged, customized strategies for institutional investors. This will shorten the time to market for new strategies that access liquidity in milliseconds, clearly differentiating them from competitors.

CITIC Securities set out to meet the considerable market opportunity in China by identifying options to replace its existing fixed platform with one that would allow it to rapidly customize high-frequency algorithmic trading strategies for its clients. Following a consultation round with a number of local and international vendors, Progress Software’s solution-based approach, reputation and local experience led CITIC Securities to make the decision to implement the Progress Apama algorithmic trading platform.

A CITIC Securities spokesperson said: “When you’re talking about trading where milliseconds make a difference, it was critical that we selected an algorithmic trading solution that would enable us to compete in a high frequency trading market with a competitive edge. The Progress Apama platform will initially be integrated with our order management system. Next, we plan to extend the algorithmic trading system into a multi-products programming trading system. Our goal is to build the best algorithmic trading system in China’s markets.”

Dr. Richard Bentley, industry vice president, capital markets at Progress Software said “Progress Apama will give CITIC Securities the ability to quickly develop and deploy unique trading strategies, to achieve dramatic advantages over competitors trading with commoditized ‘black box’ offerings. As the first investment bank in China to deploy a fully customizable algorithmic trading platform, CITIC Securities will be leading the way and setting the standard for the Chinese securities industry. We are honored to be selected by such a prestigious company in this important project and look forward to working closely with CITIC Securities.”

TFEX MD Kesara Manchusree

TFEX and 31 member companies got approval last week from the Ministry of Finance to conduct currency-related transactions, and are ready to launch USD futures on June 5. This product will enhance trading opportunity and help managing foreign exchange rate risk, said TFEX Managing Director Kesara Manchusree.

“This is the first time that Thai nationality and residents are able to trade currency futures without FX underlying thanks to the approval of Finance Ministry, Bank of Thailand, and Securities and Exchange Commission.

It is also the opportunity for investors and business operators to use this financial tool to manage foreign exchanges more freely which will be useful in preparing the country for liberalization of the financial and real sectors,” Kesara said.

Initially, investors must be Thai nationality or resident in Thailand and the market has yet to open for non-residents. The trading hours will be the same as other key derivatives products, which are morning session (09:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m.) and afternoon session (2:30-4:55 p.m).

USD Futures have four maturities, which are three nearest consecutive months plus the next quarterly months. Given the June launch, the contract months will be June, July, August, and September. One USD Futures contract values USD 1,000.

The contract is cash-settled, so there is no physical USD dollar delivered on the expiration date. Investors who are Thai residents have to open trading account with those 31 brokers or use the existing TFEX trading account if they already have one. Initial margin is less than two percents of contract value, or about THB 500 per contract.

The commission is about THB 11 per contract. For details, investors should contact TFEX full-member brokers.