Fintech weekly deals and partnerships round-up

Vela and Enyx partner on ultra-low latency market data solutions

Vela, an independent provider of trading and market access technology for global multi-asset electronic trading, and Enyx, a developer and provider of ultra-low latency technologies and solutions for the financial industry, announced a partnership to provide Vela clients with access to Enyx’s FPGA-based technology, initially focused on ultra-low latency market data solutions.

The two firms have successfully completed a Proof of Concept integrating the Enyx nxFeed, an ultra-low latency FPGA-enabled feed handler, into Vela’s award-winning software-based feed handlers to deliver wire-speed performance and jitter-free determinism at scale through a single, normalized API to access global markets. This allows Vela’s existing and future feed handler clients to leverage the improved performance of Enyx’s FPGA-powered solutions without the need for further integration effort as it is provided through Vela’s existing API that already supports over 250 venues.

The two companies will work together to identify opportunities to bring the technology to market through Vela’s range of market data, execution, and automated trading products.

Ollie Cadman, global head of Product Management and Business Operations at Vela, said in a statement, “This partnership with Enyx aligns with our strategy to provide global clients with a suite of modular components that support the full electronic trading ecosystem.”

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Standard Bank partners with Microsoft for cloud services

Standard Bank Group and Microsoft announced a new strategic partnership aimed at the bank’s technology estate and internal corporate functions. The partnership will see Microsoft providing cloud services for the bank’s internal corporate functions such as treasury, finance, employee productivity and human resources.

This news comes after an announcement of the bank’s tie-up with AWS, which is part of a multi-cloud approach. Microsoft already provides infrastructure, software, and platform services to the bank as well as cloud services across its productivity suite.

Microsoft recently launched new enterprise-grade data center regions in South Africa, becoming the first global provider to deliver cloud services from datacentres on the continent, and there are plans in place to migrate a proportion Standard Bank’s cloud services to these local data centers.

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J.P. Morgan-backed data startup raises $9mn co-led by Commerzbank’s venture arm

Mosaic Smart Data has completed a $9 million investment round co-led by CommerzVentures, the venture capital arm of Commerzbank, and Octopus Ventures. It also included existing investor and client J.P. Morgan. The fundraising will be used to support its rapid product development and global expansion. The fintech provides analytics technology suitable for investment banks, buy-side firms, custodians, ECN’s, exchanges and regulators.

Annual spending on data analytics and market data has now grown to over $30.5 billion a year. The fintech cleans, normalizes and enriches raw data and provides a consolidated real-time view and analysis across the flows of market activity. Machine learning models identify and alert the user to opportunities and threats, generating actionable insights specific to user job functions from sales and trading to management and compliance.

Zihao Xu, an early stage investor at Octopus Ventures, said in a statement: “One of the most exciting applications of artificial intelligence is combining it with human intelligence to create something which is more than the sum of its parts. Mosaic Smart Data’s machine learning models surface data insights that even the best human quant may not spot, delivering them to staff in a way which lets them act immediately. That is a powerful combination to drive productivity and performance across FICC markets globally.”

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Allianz Life Ventures backs structured note fintech startup in $11mn Series B fundraise

Allianz Life Ventures announced it has invested in Halo Investing during the company’s most recent Series B financing round. Halo is an independent multi-issuer technology platform for structured notes, which have traditionally only been available to wealthy investors because they require a minimum investment of over $1 million. The Halo platform uses analytics to help financial professionals transparently manage structured note portfolios for clients, allowing them to monitor notes, analyze trends and sell for access to secondary liquidity.

Halo has raised $11 million from venture capitalists including an affiliate of Piton Investment Management, William Blair Circle, an affiliate of William Blair, and Allianz Life Ventures. The funds will allow Halo to continue to expand its operations around the world and better facilitate its rapidly growing business. In addition, Halo plans to use the money raised to pursue two strategic initiatives aimed at changing the way structured products are manufactured, purchased and traded.

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