Daiwa unveils next generation e-trading platform in Asia
Daiwa Securities SMBC on Friday revealed an improved electronic trading platform in Asia, which offers a range of tools for its institutional clients to trade in Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, India and Taiwan.
The tools include algorithmic and Direct Market Access (DMA) trading, a crossing engine and a smart order router (SOR). The Japanese investment bank plans to hire a dozen extra professionals in Japan and Hong Kong to serve clients across the region, bringing its total staff in Asia focusing on electronic trading to around 25 people. Daiwa also has professional staff serving e-trading clients in Europe and the US.
"The demand for electronic trading strategies has increased drastically in the last few years as more buy-side clients opt for the unbundling of research and execution to achieve better efficiency and lower transaction costs," said Punit Mittal, Daiwa Securities SMBC's global head of electronic trading.
Also last week, Credit Suisse announced that it would add algorithmic trading to its DMA service for Indonesian equities.
Daiwa's platform will execute trades in equities, derivatives, foreign exchange and swaps, and, from early next year, the bank hopes to provide access to new markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, said Tokyo-based Mittal. "The new platform will support a very dynamic crossing platform as well as an advanced, integrated suite of algorithms to maximise liquidity management which other brokers may not have," he added.
Daiwa's announcement comes just a few days after Ronald Arculli, chairman of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, joined a growing chorus of critics of alternative trading platforms which source so-called "dark pools of liquidity", pointing to their relative opacity and fragmentation of liquidity.
Nevertheless, following the launch of Daiwa AlgoRithmic Trading earlier this year, the bank will roll out its "next generation crossing platform and SOR with the ability to sweep liquidity across all available execution venues in early 2010", said Mittal.