GFO-X is the UK’s first regulated and centrally cleared trading venue dedicated to digital asset derivatives.

The trading venue stated that it has been working closely with these partners to deliver the requirements necessary to grow the institutional digital asset index futures and options market. 

Read more: LCH SA to launch UK’s first centrally cleared trading venue for digital asset derivatives with GFO-X

“We are delighted to announce our strategic partners as we drive towards launch in Q1 next year. Their support is a clear and strong endorsement of our vision of the market structure required to deliver digital asset derivatives to large institutional clients,” said Arnab Sen, chief executive and co-founder at GFO-X.

“It demonstrates the need for a highly regulated venue to bring additional depth, breadth, and diversification to the current limited choices in centrally cleared digital asset index derivatives. We believe the digital asset derivatives market will grow exponentially over the coming years.”

GFO-X offers a trading platform built for institutions, providing investors with a secure and efficient trading environment to manage digital asset exposure.  

“As a market maker, our strategic connection with GFO-X underscores our commitment to the institutional digital asset futures and options market – a rapidly evolving space we believe holds significant potential for continued growth and opportunity,” said Osi Lilian, IMC Strategic Investments co-lead.

The venue added that it looks forward to announcing additional partnerships with leading financial institutions in the immediate future.

Read more: M&G Investments leads $30 million Series B funding round for GFO-X

“We are excited to partner with GFO-X, the UKs first regulated and centrally cleared trading venue dedicated to digital asset derivatives,” said Barry Polak, lead product commerce at ABN ARO Clearing.

“This strategic collaboration underscores our shared commitment to advancing the institutional digital asset futures and options market.”

The post GFO-X names ABN AMRO Clearing, IMC, Standard Chartered Bank and Virtu Financial as strategic partners ahead of launch appeared first on The TRADE.

Iouri Saroukhanov

 “We are very excited to become a direct trading participant on CEDX and provide liquidity across the exchange’s range of pan-European equity derivatives contracts,” said Koen Langemeijer, IMC Europe market making lead.

“We are strongly aligned with CEDX’s ambitions to enhance and grow Europe’s derivatives markets and look forward to providing its participants with access to our exceptional levels of liquidity.”

CEDX came to market in 2021, officially launching with a futures and options trading offering. The exchange launched single stock options trading in November last year.

It now offers around 300 options on companies from 14 European countries.

Read more – Cboe Europe Derivatives expands into single stock options

“The support of a firm of IMC’s calibre demonstrates the broad appeal of CEDX, which is lowering barriers to entry for European derivatives through its pan-European model and promotion of deep and liquid on-screen markets,” said Iouri Saroukhanov, head of European derivatives at Cboe Europe.

“We look forward to IMC’s active participation across our range of equity derivatives and supporting us on our journey to create a larger and more efficient European derivatives market.”

Until IMC’s announcement, Interactive Brokers was the most recent participant to join the exchange, having joined earlier this month.

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In a statement, Citadel Securities confirmed it had reached a preliminary agreement with IMC on the deal, which upon closure will expand its position as one of the largest floor brokers on the NYSE floor in terms of market cap and number of securities.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It is expected to close by the end of this year.

The sale represents a small portion of IMC’s overall US operations. It has been a designated market maker (DMM) on the NYSE floor after acquiring the DMM business from Goldman Sachs in 2014. The firm has since almost doubled its US operations to nearly 400 people supporting its trading.  

“The DMM business provided IMC with many benefits since we acquired it six years ago,” said Sunny Khiani, MD for IMC’s US operations. “The decision to sell our DMM business at this time is in line with IMC’s growth strategy, which focuses on our core strengths – market making, advanced technology and deep liquidity.”

Citadel Securities oversees daily trading in more than 1,500 NYSE-listed stocks and often support IPOs and direct listings. It said it has been chosen for over 60% of all NYSE listings since 2016 and more than 80% of all listings so far this year.

“We are thrilled to further extend our presence at the New York Stock Exchange,” said Joe Mecane, head of execution services for Citadel Securities. “We look forward to building new relationships and bringing the benefits of our leading liquidity offering and exceptional client service to the additional issuers who will be joining us as a result of this transaction.”

In August, Citadel Securities and its hedge fund Citadel confirmed plans to open a new office in Singapore as part of a move to further expand into the Asia Pacific region. Both firms will continue to expand in Hong Kong, while Citadel Securities increases its existing presence in Singapore and Sydney.

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IMC is the latest ELP systematic internaliser to be onboarded by Vela as it looks to consolidate disparate liquidity across Europe. Vela’s data feed handling service, SMDS, provides users with low-latency access, coverage and support for major asset classes.

“Our fully-hosted and managed ticker plant appliance and agile integration process ensures our mutual clients have access to ultra-low latency and high-performance normalised market data as they require it,” said Ollie Cadman, global head of product management and business operations at Vela.

IMC, which develops technology and algorithms to trade various asset classes on more than 100 venues, added that its ELP SI offers liquidity to counterparties not available on other platforms from natural positions held on its central risk book.

“We are very happy to be working with Vela to connect our fast-growing ELP SI platform to their data feed handling coverage and grow the number of firms having access to our unique ELP SI liquidity,” Bruce Gunn, institutional sales trader for ETF trading at IMC, commented. “In addition to this SI being available in Europe, clients in the U.S. can also leverage the same technology through our single dealer platform.”

Systematic internalisers were first introduced under MiFID, but grew in popularity following the closure of broker crossing networks as part of the revised directive. ELP SIs, operated in Europe by market makers such as Citadel Securities, XTX Markets, Tower Research and Virtu Financial, have also seen an uptick in volumes since the regulation was enforced.

Research earlier this year said that ELP SIs account for around 18% of total addressable SI volume, almost 50% of all SI activity below the large in scale thresholds, and 2.4% of total market volume.

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