18/1/2010

By Neil Ainger

EDX London and the Nordic trading venue, Oslo Børs, which provide Scandinavian and Russian derivative trading opportunities, are now sharing a common platform, based on TMX Group's Sola Trading System. The two signed a strategic partnership agreement last year and the LSE-owned EDX venue also sold a 19.9 per cent stake to TMX, so the launch of the common platform will introduce new efficiencies for the partners and allow new products to be launched.

The new common platform shared by EDX London and Oslo Børs offers improved speed and functionality to derivative market participants. It already includes a suite of Nordic indices, a broadened choice of Finnish derivatives and fixed income futures, with more new products on the way. The TMX Sola Trading shared technology platform will provide a strong base for further development, says Jesper von Zweigbergk, senior vice president of derivatives at Oslo Børs. "We're very happy to have migrated to a new and enhanced platform that can support future growth," he added.

According to Raffaele Jerusalmi, director of capital markets at London Stock Exchange Group: "EDX London's successful launch onto Sola means a faster, more advanced technology offering for our clients and the introduction of a diverse, new range of products with simple, competitive pricing."

"The development of EDX's Scandinavian derivatives offering builds on the strength of the already highly successful Russia IOB service and demonstrates EDX's ability to adapt its offering in line with customer demand," he continues. "Working together with TMX Group we plan to create a market with a bigger scale and wider range of products."

As part of the development, London Stock Exchange Group's clearing house CC&G will, for the first time, be providing clearing services in the UK to EDX London. Risk and central counterparty clearing will continue to be provided by LCH.Clearnet and for Oslo Børs members via Oslo Clearing, a company in the Oslo Børs VPS Group.

• In other news, EDX London and Oslo Børs also switched over to the Scila Surveillance solution from Cinnober when they launched their common derivatives trading platform at the turn of the year. It will be used in the fight against market abuse and to ensure a fully regulated marketplace.

"Monitoring a high-transaction options market is complex. There are hundreds of underlying instruments and thousands of option calculations to keep track of," explains Lee Betsill, managing director at EDX London. "Despite this, we've been able to quickly and easily deploy the Scila Surveillance solution into our new infrastructure for high liquidity options trading. I've been impressed with its flexibility and throughput capacity so far, and believe we are well equipped for the dynamic market we see in front of us."

Scila Surveillance is a Java-based surveillance system provided by Cinnober to trading venues, regulators and market participants. In 2009 it was implemented at four different trading venues - spanning equities to commodities and derivatives markets, in terms of the Nordic MTF Burgundy, the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange, as well as the Oslo Børs and EDX London project. The established nature of the software was the key reason for specifying it with the new shared Sola trading platform.