Nasdaq Deal Puts Surveillance in Spotlight

With no end in sight to the acceleration of trading speeds and volumes, Nasdaq OMX Group has agreed to acquire Smarts Group, a long-established leader in the market surveillance technology that is becoming increasingly critical in rooting out illegal or improper exchange and brokerage transactions.

7月27日，达未披露的条款的协议将增加纳斯达克介绍纳斯达克市场技术业务的产品，其中纳斯达克市场技术业务提供了70多个交易所和其他证券 - 基础设施客户在50多个国家。澳大利亚的悉尼智慧表示，它有30多个国家拥有30个交易所和监管客户和50个经纪客户。该公司拥有130多名员工，自1994年以来一直在监控技术业务。

The announcement underscores the growing importance of and demand for surveillance tools at a time when exchange operators and participants alike are on high alert for non-complying activity, both intentional and inadvertent, that may affect the smooth functioning of markets. The risk of “fat finger” errors and the still mysterious May 6 “flash crash” are fresh in market players’ minds.

Nasdaq chief information officer Anna Ewing said Smarts will be a “strategic fit” with her market technology business, which generated $145 million in revenue last year.

“Efficient surveillance operations are imperative to ensure integrity in today’s financial markets, and Smarts allows us to capitalize on the growing demand for surveillance technology products in exchange, regulator and broker markets worldwide,” Ewing said in a statement.

Andreas Furche, CEO of Smarts Group, which was advised in the transaction by New York-based Marlin & Associates, said the affiliation with Nasdaq OMX promises “enormous growth opportunities” and “the direct connection to the U.S. markets that we have been seeking.” He added that Smarts customers will gain from “working with a world-leading company that has a similar customer base and therefore understands the business and requirements of Smarts’ customers.”

Nasdaq’s strategic move reflects not only the heightened attention to surveillance, but also the importance of technologies that enable it to keep pace with market changes. Complex event processing (CEP), a high-performance computing and analytic technology that has helped to fuel the growth of algorithmic trading, is now also being applied to market surveillance and supervision. Progress Software Corp.’s Apama division has been in the forefront of this trend, having announced three years ago that its Event Processing Platform would be a key component of the U.K. Financial Services Authority’s SABRE II real-time market surveillance system. A similar deal with Turquoise, an alternative trading platform now owned by the London Stock Exchange Group, followed soon after.

基于Massachusetts的进步贝德福德亚军上发布了一个“加速器”，为4月份的市场监测和监测解决方案发布了“加速器”，以及6月份宣布的进步亚南部资本市场基金会包括“高度灵活的市场监测和风险管理应用”中的系统 -开发能力。APAMA联合创始人和CEP先驱John Bates，进步软件的首席技术官表示，该公司在今年上半年签署了10个交易场所。

Meanwhile, at the regulatory level, Bates was recently named a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Committee, which also has representatives of Bloomberg, Chicago Mercantile Exchange parent CME Group, GFI Group, IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) and the National Futures Association, among others.

MEP竞争对手的Massachusetts Lexington的Streambase Systems也在追求监测业务。6月，基于伦敦的Redkite表示，它已选择Streambase作为其Redeye交易监控产品选择的CEP提供商。Streambase旨在形成这种与“行业专家”的合作伙伴关系，CEO Mark Palmer指出，增加，“CEP已被建立为建立自动交易系统的事实上的平台。接下来，我们认为它将成为监控应用的事实上的平台。“

More and Enhanced Relationships

智能公司去年正式向美国市场推出了技术，今年一直特别活跃，具有新的和扩大的客户协议。例如，当美国蝙蝠交换时，聪明的客户进入欧洲市场，它也扩展了智慧关系。此外，最近的公告是瑞典的瑞典，信贷瑞典标准证券，CME集团和冰。

CEO Furche于6月份表示，冰智能的“最大的衍生品交换客户，代表”新一代全球智慧全球客户，即24小时交易。“澳大利亚公司表示，Exchange安装将于8月由Smarts.Broker系统提供智能制度，在冰全球期货市场上交易的所有期货和选项仪器的深入监控服务，“澳大利亚公司表示。

At the time of the CME Smarts.broker announcement in May, Furche said, “With increased regulatory pressure on futures and derivatives markets in general, the Smarts offering provides futures commission merchants, introducing brokers and other market participants with an extremely cost-effective and valuable tool to monitor trading activity and comply with exchange rules and market regulations.”

Last year, Smarts said, it launched the world’s first cross-market monitoring platform for derivatives. Smarts.broker “monitors most of the world’s major derivatives markets, which has provided us a deep understanding and expertise in the complexities of detecting prohibited trading behaviors on derivatives markets worldwide,” said Furche.