Daiwa Securities SMBC (Daiwa), a Japan-based investment bank, has launched an electronic trading platform in Asia, offering institutional clients globally the ability to trade in Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, India and Taiwan through a suite of advanced electronic trading tools including algorithmic trading, crossing engine, Direct Market Access (DMA) trading and smart order router (SOR).
Daiwa also plans to hire an additional dozen professionals in Japan and Hong Kong to serve clients across the region. Daiwa will also likely to roll out a new crossing platform and SOR with the ability to sweep liquidity across all available execution venues in early 2010. Punit Mittal has been named head of the expanded team, to be based
in Tokyo.
Mr Mittal said: “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.
“Helping clients enhance liquidity management is a key focus for Daiwa, given that 89% of total equity trading cost can be attributed to indirect costs such as market impact costs and opportunity costs due to information leakage.”
Toshinao Matsushima, managing director and head of global markets at Daiwa Securities SMBC, said: “Daiwa is committed to becoming a full service investment bank in order to tap into the growing Asian markets. To that end, we are expanding across all divisions including investment banking, electronic trading, equity financing and derivatives to service global institutional clients.”
