Global financial services technology provider GBST (ASX:GBT) and Australian independent financial services group BBY Limited today announced they have gone live with GBST’s equities clearing and settlement platform Shares™ in a bid to support the growing scale of BBY’s business.
The GBST Shares™ platform settles close to 50% of all trades executed on the ASX on any given day, and is the most scalable and widely used middle and back-office equities system in Australia. GBST Shares™ has been benchmarked to process greater than one million trades per day pre single instance, more than double the largest trading day ever recorded by a participating broker.
Providing institutional and private client stockbroking, equities research, corporate finance, broker dealer services, trade execution and clearing services, BBY has a strong presence in Australia, the UK and the US. The move to the fully integrated version of GBST Shares™, which includes derivatives, shares, risk, Front Office and infrastructure hosting, is expected to provide greater scale for the BBY business.
“We chose Shares™ after a competitive vendor selection process and we believe this new platform will facilitate the higher trading volumes we’re expecting to experience in the near to medium term, particularly given our recent acceptance as a Chi-X market participant,” said BBY CFO Arun Maharaj.
In light of recent industry reforms, BBY has successfully applied to the ASX to become a selfclearing broker to deliver greater value and efficiencies to clients. BBY has been executing, clearing and settling trades for its Australian private clients from December 5th, 2011.
“We believe BBY’s move to self-clearing will deliver quicker and more accurate trade processing, streamlined compliance, and will leverage leading-edge technology as well as some of the most experienced people in the domestic clearing industry,” explained Mr Maharaj.
“BBY clearing trades internally with the support of Shares™ differentiates them from the overall industry trend we’re seeing towards third party clearing which has been prompted by the ASX’s decision to raise capital liquidity requirements for self-clearing brokers from $100,000 to $5 million and eventually to $10 million,” said Denis Orrock, CEO of GBST Broker and Financial Services.
“While we will continue to see consolidation amongst the broking industry, it’s encouraging an independent Australian broking house is making a long term commitment to its position in the market. The Australian equities market can ill afford to lose the unique and individual contributions that brokers such as BBY provide to the market and the broader investment community. I look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with BBY as we meet the market challenges and changing regulatory environment together,” concluded Mr Orrock.
GBST continues to roll out the Shares™ platform to clients in Australia and the Syn~ platform to other markets globally following a period of significant investment in the technology. GBST will go live in mid-2012 with their first implementation of the Syn~ technology in Australia.
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