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Thomson Reuters Acquires Aegisoft to Expand DMA Offering

Aegisoft's Athena product line brings exchange connectivity and expands Thomson Reuter's target market into buy-side quants and hedge funds doing algo trading.

Thomson Reuters has acquired the assets and business of Aegisoft, to expand its direct market access trading capabilities in exchange-traded cash and derivatives markets.

"What we lacked until now is the direct markets network in terms of the exchange connectivity piece that Aegisoft brings to the table," said Stephen Wilson, global head of exchanged traded instruments, in an interview with Wall Street & Technology.

Aegisoft is a U.S. based provider of electronic trading solutions and testing tools, that built its business on the Athena product line, a high performance multi-asset trading platform that provides order and execution management, exchange connectivity and foreign exchange aggregation as well as client and exchange simulators for testing algorithmic trading strategies.

In commenting on the deal yesterday Wilson stressed the importance of the direct exchange connectivity, as well as the Athena platform's advanced order types, spread functionality for constructing multi-leg trades in equities and derivatives, and access to exchange simulators for back-testing algorithmic trading strategies.

With the merger of the Thomson and Reuters, the combination of the order routing networks (from Tradeweb/Autex and from Reuters side) has given the company about 7,000 connections globally in diverse parts of the world, with increasing numbers of derivatives connections, said Wilson.

"We've got a fantastic order routing network and desktop global footprint. What we haven't had (is) the trading access directly onto exchanges and alternative liquidity networks, either for brokers trading in their own name or for brokers wanting to provide sponsored access," explained Wilson.

AthenaTrader currently supports connectivity to all the U.S. markets, including NYSE, Nasdaq, Arca, CME, Hotspot, Lava FX, among others. Wilson said it also had a good suite of exchange connections across the European markets and Asia, citing TIFFE. It's a combination of cash and derivatives market," he said, noting "Their support of both cash and derivatives markets was another driver of the acquisition."

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio

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